


Continuing Travels of Cophine, Part 2

by ce_ucumatli



Series: Continuing Travels of Cophine [2]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Birthday Sex, Dildos, F/F, Nightmares, Sex, Sexual Harassment, Vomiting, conversation about bivalves, okay maybe only one dildo, passport control, sex while high, very quiet sex, very special brownies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-03-11 13:44:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 58,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13525500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ce_ucumatli/pseuds/ce_ucumatli
Summary: They've cured all the American Ledas. Now they need to cure everyone else. Picks up a few weeks after Part 1.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Our ladies are traveling through many parts of the world that I haven't personally been to before. If you have experience with these places, and you think I got them wrong, please tell me in the comments! I've done research, but research is never as good as personal experience.
> 
> Also, as I've mentioned in other works, I haven't read the new book about Delphine's backstory. The backstory for her that I give comes entirely from my own head.

While the sun rose over Marrakech and peeked through the hotel curtains, Delphine stared at her computer screen, one fingertip between her teeth. Cosima was still asleep, on her stomach with the covers pulled over her head, her gentle breaths drowned out by the traffic outside. After staying awake for both legs of their flight from Toronto, and their six-hour layover in Zürich, Delphine had expected to be in the same position, but she'd been awake for two hours, thinking. The first Moroccan clone was set to be vaccinated at noon, and tomorrow they left for Casablanca to vaccinate the second. That wasn't what she was thinking about, though.

She closed the Maps tab and frowned at the Chrome tab that replaced it. The man in the picture didn't even look back at her. He focused on his work, on the papers spread out in front of him, while his biography did the talking. 

_Alain J. Cormier, internationally renowned economist and author of seven prize-winning books, including last year's best-selling...._

Delphine blew out a long breath and rubbed her face. She knew all of that. Sometimes it felt like that was all she knew about him. Even his picture looked to be at least 10 or 20 years old, but that could be because he never changed his style.

She opened the email tab again and stared some more.

 _Cher Papa,_ followed by a blinking cursor.

She had typed five sentences in thirty minutes, deleting each as inappropriate. They were too casual or too formal. Too much information upfront. Too indirect. Trying too hard to be funny. 

And this was supposed to be the easier of the two emails she meant to send this morning. 

Across the room, Cosima rolled over and groped around the empty side of the bed with a grumble, then fell back asleep with only the top of her head visible. She remembered Cosima's nervousness about emailing her own parents back in November, and how Cosima had read and re-read the email aloud before sending it, and then rehearsed various ways to come out to them as a clone. At least Delphine didn't have to come out to anyone as a clone. She got up and made a cup of the hotel's complimentary black tea, and stretched. Maybe she was overthinking this.

Once she'd had a few sips of the tea, she sat back down and typed again. 

_Cher Papa,_

_My fiancée and I will be in Paris from 25 May until 8 June, and we hope that we can see you while we're there._

_À bientôt?_

_Delphine_

She skimmed it for typos and hit SEND. Then, before she could second guess herself, she copied and pasted the message into an email to her mother and sent that as well. Then she crawled back into bed. As Cosima would say, _fuck it._

* *

After two nights in Marrakech they took a three hour bus ride to Casablanca, where they dropped their luggage at the hotel before check in, and Delphine threatened to break off their engagement if Cosima quoted that goddamn Humphrey Bogart movie one more time. 

Cosima stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk and turned. “You don't mean that.”

Delphine stared at her, wearing her best Director of Dyad face. Her sunglasses, thankfully, hid her actual amusement at Cosima's reaction. “I might.”

“Just because you've never seen it....” 

“A fault which you will no doubt remedy soon enough.” 

“I'm planning on it. Tonight, hopefully. Just you and me, plus Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and a bunch of those awesome coconut fudge cakes I've seen a few places. Sounds like a date to me.”

She couldn't keep from smiling at that. “And hopefully we won't have to spend two hours getting the hotel's internet to work.”

“Oh, hell no. I think Morocco's pretty civilized in that regard. Well, in most regards, but especially in that one.” 

It was cooler in Morocco this time of year than they'd expected, but sunny, and they had light jackets and sensible walking boots to keep them comfortable as they headed towards the university.

“Who is this person we're going to see?” Delphine asked.

Cosima checked her notes on her phone. “Dr. Adam Klein. Some friend of a friend kind of thing, from Alison. She set the appointment up last week.”

“Adam Klein?”

“Yeah, I'm guessing he's not exactly a native.”

*

Dr. Klein was indeed not a native of Morocco, but of Canada. He was a dignified man several inches taller than Delphine, with a navy blue sweater over his collared shirt. His office reminded Delphine of Cosima's old apartment, with books and papers stacked wherever space allowed. A map of world language families took up most of the eastern wall, and windows on the southern and western walls opened to a vista of sun-baked buildings and palm trees. Delphine and Cosima squeezed themselves between overflowing boxes to the two chairs that Dr. Klein gestured to. 

“Welcome,” he said. “How are you enjoying Morocco so far?”

They said it was wonderful. “Yeah, it's way better than Toronto right now,” Cosima said as they both got out notebooks and pencils.

Dr. Klein laughed indulgently. “I'm sure it is, even though it's rather chilly outside right now. When did you arrive?”

“A few days ago.”

He nodded. “And I understand you're on a -” He stopped to consult his computer screen. “- a medical research trip?”

“Euh...” Delphine shifted. 

“Partially,” Cosima said. “There is some research, but we're also treating women who are at risk for certain rare conditions.”

“I see. And you're traveling to almost every country in the region, it looks like.”

“That's correct.”

“You're not going to Djibouti, though?”

“No.”

Delphine help up a finger. “Euh, unless we get information that indicates that we should.” For all they knew, there was a clone in Djibouti, and the Leda List address was out of date. It had happened before, with other regions.

Dr. Klein nodded and folded his hands together on this desk. “Well, the first thing you should know is that every region, every sub-region, every locality even, has its own form of Arabic, and these forms vary in how mutually intelligible they are or are not.”

They both nodded. “Yes, we got that impression,” Delphine said.

“How much experience do you have with Arabic? From your associate's email, I'm assuming not very much. Is that correct?”

“Well, Delphine knows a little bit more than I do...”

“But not very much. I know some basic greetings, and, euh...” Her face warmed at the memory of how she'd learned the names of a few rather specific body parts. “And that's about it.”

“I see,” Dr. Klein repeated, and checked his notes again. “And, uh, Dr. Cormier, am I'm right?” She nodded. “Am I correct in assuming that you speak French?”

“Oui.”

“Well, you're probably already aware of the advantage you'll find here in Morocco, as well as in Algeria and Tunisia.”

“Oui,” she said again. “But not such a great advantage, I don't think, in every situation. French was the colonial language, not the local one.”

“Ehhh.... yes and no. I'm sure you've seen the signs around town that are in French, and the French bakeries in the city. The name of our university, too, of course, is French. I have a graduate student right now looking at specific ways that local dialects have been influenced by French, and how that influence varies from place to place. I can put you in touch with her, if you'd like.”

“No, that won't be necessary, thank you.”

He raised his hands in an “I tried” gesture. “How can I help you, then?”

“Well, like you said,” Cosima began, “there's a different dialect in each of the places we're going to. We have a dictionary and a phrasebook -” She pulled them out to show him, “- but we could really use some country-specific terms and tips before we get to these places. We tried talking to some folks back in Canada, but all of their expertise was pretty limited.”

“Well, I can try.” He scratched his cheek. “Most of my expertise is in the nitty-gritty linguistic details, you understand.”

Looking around the office, Delphine saw that most of the books were indeed along those lines. On the shelf nearest her, she saw _A Study in Arab Linguistics_ ; _North African Arabic Semantics, A Brief Introduction_ ; and _Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics, Volumes XX, XXI, and XXII_. 

“Yes, we understand,” she told him. “And I'm sure many of those details are quite fascinating, but what we need more are, ehm... maybe more day-to-day tips or advice.”

“Right.” Cosima nodded. “Like, is there anything that's totally cool to say in Morocco that would get us shot in Egypt or something like that?” She smirked, but both Dr. Klein and Delphine grimaced at her wording. 

“There's nothing that extreme,” Dr. Klein assured her. “You're both obviously foreign, so mistakes will be forgiven by almost everyone. Your larger concerns will be cultural, especially being women, and, well-” He gestured at Delphine. “-blonde.”

“Yes, I think we have that part under control, thank you.” Delphine tapped her notebook with her pencil. They'd been in Dr. Klein's office for ten minutes, and he hadn't given them anything worth writing down yet. 

Cosima shot her a sideways look and cleared her throat. “Nothing that extreme, okay, but is there anything else that would be helpful for us, linguistically speaking? Medically, in particular.”

“Medically?”

“Yes, medically,” Delphine snapped. “We are here for medical purposes.”

“Right. Well, if you're speaking to medical professionals, you can use the standard terms and phrases in your book there. A number of them will speak English and French as well.”

“And if we're not speaking to medical professionals? If we're speaking to patients? Or patients' families?”

“Well, then it depends on the person's education, social class, and all of that.”

In other words, it would be just like Latin America, but in Arabic, with more extreme differences between dialects. “Of course,” Delphine said. “It would, however, be quite helpful if you knew of anything we should make sure to say in specific countries or regions, or make sure to avoid saying in certain places, as well. For example, the word _coger_ means _to catch_ in Spain, and it's completely neutral, but in Mexico it means _to fuck_. We were hoping that you could help us avoid such uncouth mistakes as these.”

Cosima arched her eyebrow at her and smirked again. 

Dr. Klein coughed. “Nothing quite so uncouth as that, no. There are some differences in pronunciation for what you might consider the same word, some orthographical variations, and, as I mentioned, the influence of French in some areas, like Morocco.”

Delphine snapped her notebook closed. “Of course. I think it might be best if we get a phrasebook every time we enter a new country, then. Thank you for your time, Dr. Klein.”

He inclined his head and rose to show them out of this office.

Outside, on the bright university campus, Delphine shook her head. “That was a waste of time.”

“I dunno, I think we coulda gotten some interesting stuff from him if we'd stayed longer.”

“Interesting, but not useful for our purposes here.”

“You can't blame Alison for recommending him, though. She tried.”

They got a late lunch at the university's café and sat down with the notes they'd compiled in Canada. Between bites of lamb tangia, Cosima practiced with the pronunciation guide they'd gotten from an Arabic teacher Sarah'd met through her community college. Thankfully, she made sure to swallow before practicing each word, or she might have choked.

“You sound like you're trying to regurgitate your own tongue,” Delphine said. 

“That's how it feels, too. I mean, the teacher did say that this letter is like the last sound you make before you choke to death, so maybe I'm doing it right.”

It certainly did sound that way. Of course, when Rashid had taught her those words more than ten years ago, Delphine hadn't thought of it that way. Maybe she should get Cosima to practice her Arabic naked next time.

Thoughts of Rashid had been an unexpected side effect of traveling in North Africa. He had been Tunisian, not Moroccan, but that didn't make a difference for her memories. It also didn't help that many of the young men here wore the same cologne Rashid always had, so just walking down a sidewalk could jolt her mind fourteen years back in time.

Cosima moved on to trying out the difference between the letters ص and س, and Delphine watched her manipulate various parts of her vocal tract to get the right amount of glottalization. She'd never told Cosima about Rashid. It never really mattered, but then, Jérôme hadn't mattered, either, and Cosima had been so upset upon learning about him. Her main anger had not been over the story itself, though, but that she'd heard about it first from Julian, rather than from Delphine herself.

Delphine ate another slice of dried date, savoring the sweet chewiness before swallowing. “You know, I once had a Tunisian boyfriend.”

Cosima put her notes down and grinned at her. “Oh yeah?”

“Well, calling him a boyfriend might be a stretch.”

“Uh huh.” Cosima had been with enough people to know the various shades of dating, at least. “Was he hot?”

“Oh, yes. He was a carpentry, euh.... student of some kind. He was working as a carpenter, but he was also learning.”

“Like an apprentice.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Cosima's grin got a little more wicked. “So he was good with his hands, then.”

Despite her best efforts, Delphine blushed. “Yes.”

Cosima wiggled her eyebrows and stuck her tongue between her teeth. “Are you gonna tell me more, or just mention that he existed?”

“Mmm, well, we weren't together very long. His company was remodeling the kitchen in my mother's house, and, well...”

“Hot damn!” Cosima leaned forward and grabbed some of Delphine's dates, popping them into her mouth like popcorn. “So you had, like, a real life porno movie experience. Hot carpenter comes over, sex ensues.”

She was blushing again. “Something like that, yes.”

“Let me guess, you seduced him?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Cosima tutted and helped herself to more of Delphine's dates. “Come on, Cormier, you can't give me an opening like that and then get all vague on me. Give me details. Please tell me you fucked on a freshly refurbished countertop or something.” 

Delphine looked around. It was close to two in the afternoon, so the café was close to empty, but a few students still sat at tables a few meters away. They wore headphones, but one young man sitting behind Cosima kept looking up at them every few minutes, making eye contact and sometimes licking his lips. “Details later,” Delphine said. 

“You promise?”

She rose and gathered their trays together. “I promise.”

* * *

Their second day in Casablanca, Cosima spent the day at a different university, meeting with an old colleague of her advisor's about her dissertation work, and Delphine spent five hours in the downtown clinic of Dr. Jamal El Guerrouj, a large man with a grey beard who squinted at her when they shook hands.

“We've met before,” he said.

“Have we?” She smiled, panicking inside. 

“Yes. At a fundraising event, maybe two years ago.” He released her hand and showed her into the examination room where she would see patients that day. “Aldous Leekie was still in charge back then. I expect you were paying more attention to him.”

Oh, _that_ event. When Sarah dressed up as Cosima and fooled everyone for at least a couple of minutes. “Perhaps I was,” she said, still smiling. 

“I never did find out what happened to that old louse,” Dr. El Guerrouj said. 

Delphine set her medical bag on the desk next to a tray of medical vials the clinic had provided her, all full. “I'm afraid he's dead.”

“Pity.” Inside his grey beard, though, he smiled. “And even Dyad itself is no more, is that correct?”

“They're wrapped up in legal battles at the moment.”

She wondered what Dr. El Guerrouj had done with Dyad to earn a spot at the gala two years ago. None of the other doctors had mentioned or probably even known Aldous, and most had never even been to Canada. They had worked for contractors or intermediaries, out of touch with the big picture their patients were involved with. 

Dr. El Guerrouj smiled at her again and patted the exam table. “You will have about ten patients today. Let us know if you need anything.”

“Of course, thank you. Oh, and, what are these women coming to me for, exactly?”

“Fertility treatments. Hormone injections, mostly.” He pointed to the tray on the desk. “You special patient will get two, and everyone else will get one.”

She nodded, and he left. 

* *

A few days later, in Meknès, Delphine got a email from her father. 

_Chère Delphine,_

_We would be happy to see you then. Call when you've arrived and we can arrange something._

_AC_

She blinked a few times and read it again. He signed it the same way he always had. It was never “Papa” or anything, but always just “AC.” She'd expected some questions, though. Questions about where she'd been or what she'd been doing, about the word _fiancée_ and questions about its spelling, but there weren't any here. Instead, she had a question of her own. _We? Who is this_ we _he's talking about?_

“Delphine?” 

“Hm?” 

Cosima was leaning over towards her, waving her hand. “You alright?”

“Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I just got an email. Papa says he'd be happy to see us in Paris. Euh... what were you saying, chérie?”

“Well, I was saying that we should visit that mausoleum tomorrow, but this is way more important! Your dad says he'd be happy to see _us_? Does he know you'll be showing up with me?”

“He knows I'm visiting with my fiancée, and that my fiancée is a woman. That's all he knows.”

“Okay, but still! That's huge, babe!” Cosima took Delphine's hand in both of hers and kissed it a few times. “How do you feel about it, though?”

She read the message again. “Cautiously optimistic.”

Cosima rubbed Delphine's knuckles over her cheek. “Why cautiously?”

“Pfff, because it's Papa. I don't really know what to expect. I doubt he'll show any strong emotions one way or another, though. He never has before.”

“He never, like, got mad at you as a kid or anything?”

“No. That was my mother's job.”

“Okay.” Cosima went on warming Delphine's fingers with her hands and her face, a lovely gesture with the 60 degree temperatures outside and the lack of heat in the hotel room. “Have you heard from your mom yet?”

“No.”

“Hm. And no _Message Undeliverable_ , either, I assume.”

“That's correct.”

Cosima breathed deeply and looked down at their joined hands. She'd made no secret of wanting to meet Delphine's parents, to hear about them and about Delphine's youth and childhood. 

“It's okay if she doesn't respond,” Delphine told her. “Sometimes she doesn't.”

“When's the last time you emailed her?”

“When I got the job with Dyad, and I left for Canada. So, three years ago, I think? Four, maybe?”

“And she responded then?”

She tried to remember. “I think so? But something short, like 'Okay' or something, and that was it.”

Cosima chewed on her lip and massaged Delphine's palm with her thumbs in a way sure to make her lose focus before long. “Is it possible she has a new email address?”

“Non. I sent it to her professional address.”

“Hm. What does she do, again?”

The pleasure of the hand massage and the days of Arabic mushed Delphine's brain too much to think. “Nothing important,” she slurred. 

Cosima giggled. “I'll remember that when, and if, I meet her. She does nothing important.”

* * *

They took a charter bus to Fès on the first of February, hoping to meet a clone they hadn't be able to find on social media. The doctor listed for her was not available, either, so they were going into Fès blind. She might have symptoms. She might not live in Fès anymore. She might be dead.

Cosima had the window seat this trip, and she watched the desert zip by with her headphones in, listening to one of her podcasts. Judging by the serious set of her mouth, the podcast was probably political. Delphine had a copy of _Science & Vie_ open on her lap and was halfway through an article about domestic cat ancestry when a hand brushed her face.

The man who stood in the aisle grinned at her, winked, and gestured with his head towards the back of the bus. 

“Non,” she said. Shaking her head, she leaned away from him, scowling. He got the message and went off without her.

Five minutes later, though, just as her heart rate had settled down, something brushed her hair. It was the same man, grinning at her and playing with her hair. She shook her head, but he grabbed a chunk of her hair between his fingers and laughed. 

Her movements startled Cosima, who yanked out her headphones when she saw what was happening.

“Dude what the fuck!”

Delphine clamped her hand on Cosima's thigh. “It's okay, the gentleman's leaving now.”

“The gentleman” might not have understood English, and might not have planned to leave, but he understood the switchblade in Delphine's right hand, and he backed up into the seat across the aisle. He said something in Arabic that she understood perfectly, even if she didn't know the words.

When they arrived in Fès thirty minutes later, many of the men from the bus gave them both a wide berth while looking up and down Delphine from every angle they could manage. The driver got their luggage for them, and they went on their way, Cosima still glaring back at the men from the bus. A small man with a five-o'clock shadow jogged up to them. 

“Excuse, miss? Miss and miss?”

Delphine saw a muscle twitch in Cosima's jaw, and she put a hand on her shoulder. “Yes?”

“Yes, Miss, I apologize my friend. He is very unpolite, I apologize.”

“Your friend?” Cosima snapped. “If he's your friend, why...”

“Cosima. It's okay.” Seeing Cosima still steaming, she repeated, softly, “it's okay.”

Looking at the small Moroccan man, she saw that he stood unevenly, and the left side of his face appeared slack compared to the right, the result of a stroke or Bell's Palsy, perhaps. He wore baggy slacks and a polo-style shirt with long sleeves dabbed with motor oil. “I apologize,” he repeated. 

“Thank you,” Delphine said. “Euh, perhaps you could help us, actually?”

Most of his face smiled at that. “Yes, I think.”

“We're looking for her sister.” She still had her hand on Cosima's shoulder, and she gave it a little rub now. “Her name's Malika. They look very similar.”

“Malika?” He gave Cosima a serious look and scratched his head. “She is how old?”

“Thirty-two.” She might be thirty-three, but that wasn't important right now.

He thought about it. “She is here? She is in Fès?”

“Uh, we think so,” Cosima said. “But we don't really know where.”

His face wasn't encouraging, but Delphine got an information card from her bag and handed it to him. It was printed in English, Arabic, and French to cover all bases. “You can give her this,” Delphine said, “if you see her.”

“Okay.” He nodded and pocketed the card, then reached out a hand to shake. “Mohammad,” he said. “Happy to meet you!”

They shook hands and introduced themselves, then Delphine firmly said, “Good bye,” and they went off to their hotel. Once Mohammad was out of earshot, Cosima's face turned back into storm cloud. She gave every man they passed a dirty look, and when one man whistled at them from a gas station, Delphine had to hold her back. 

“We're not here to fight,” she reminded her. “We're here to cure your sisters.”

Cosima gritted her teeth and allowed Delphine to lead her along the remaining block to the hotel. “I can't just let them get away with it, though. That guy fucking.... assaulted you! If you hadn't flashed that knife, I...” Words failed her then, and Delphine restrained herself from pulling her close. 

“Any manner of things could have happened,” she said, “whether I had the knife or not. It was lucky that he stopped and backed off, yes.” The knife might not have been such a good idea, actually. It could have escalated things into a larger fight that dragged Cosima down with it, and risked their entire mission.

Cosima watched her as they stepped into the shade of their hotel, a sandy-brown building with blue and white tiles along the entryway. “I would've punched him in the fucking face if he hadn't backed off.”

“Shh... I'm sure you would have, chérie.”

Before they went inside, Cosima paused and took a few deep breaths. “I should be comforting you, not the other way around.”

Delphine smiled at her. “It's okay. I'm sorry to say, I am used to this. I am used to men, euh, treating me this way.”

Cosima frowned. Maybe she remembered the afternoon in Brazil when two men had followed them halfway to their hotel, making lewd noises and gestures the entire time. Or the American expat in Ecuador who spent an evening telling them, from his table next to theirs, how much he loved French women and why.

“I don't want you to be used to it,” Cosima said.

“Neither do I,” Delphine said with a small laugh, “but I am. This happens to me everywhere I go. In some places more aggressively than others, but everywhere, my whole life since I was a teenager.”

A family of German tourists walked passed them into the hotel, arguing with each other. Cosima watched them, and Delphine watched Cosima. 

“I mean, I know it's common,” Cosima said once the Germans were inside. “It's not like guys don't awkwardly hit on me or say weird things. That's part of being a woman, especially in the sciences, right? But, like, that's different. I mean, shit, Scott tried to hit on me when we first worked together, but he let it go pretty quickly once he knew I was gay.”

The worst harassment Delphine had ever gotten was in a biology lab in France, but that story should probably wait until another time, when Cosima was less prickly. She picked up Cosima's bag from where she'd let it fall to the ground and slung it over her free shoulder. “Come on. Let's get checked it.”

*

Sitting on the love seat in the hotel lobby while they waited for their room to become ready, Cosima leaned against Delphine's shoulder, then straightened back up again. They'd agreed that, for this leg of their trip, they shouldn't be too physically affectionate in public, at least until they had a better feel for the cultural norms. “So we're playing the long-lost sister game again, are we?”

Delphine shrugged. “It's worked for us before.”

“Yeah, once, and she wasn't conscious when she met me. It'll get really weird really fast if Malika tries tracing our story back, and it'll be hard to make the schtick work if she doesn't meet me.”

Delphine wanted to hold her hand so much her fingers twitched. “We can handle it,” she said.

“Yeah... just lie, right?”

Delphine turned and rested her arm on the back of the love seat. “If it's a choice between that and frightening her away, then yes.” 

A British couple walked through the lobby and the wife them a curious glance while her husband fussed with his fanny pack. Delphine didn't suspect that globe-trotting Brits were terribly homophobic, but she still restrained herself from stroking Cosima's hair. 

“I know lying isn't your favorite thing to do, chérie. I can do the lying if you'd prefer, especially if Malika speaks French. I can just explain that you speak some other language, and I'm speaking for you.”

“Yeah, there's no way that can go wrong. Especially since Mohammad heard me speaking English.”

“True. It's not much of a lie, though, is it? She is your sister, and you were separated a long time ago.”

“Yeah, before we were even in the womb. Or, wombs, rather.”

“And her parents almost certainly used fertility treatments to get her.”

Cosima nodded, either worn down by reasoning or too overwhelmed by everything else that day to continue arguing. “You know, I am curious if any Leda parents out there _didn't_ get IVF of some kind. Like, people who didn't willingly submit their genitals to medical tampering.”

“You have such a way with words, chérie.”

“Hey, you know what I mean.”

“I do.”

* 

They spent three days in Fès, going into every shop and company they could, asking if anyone knew Malika, Cosima's alleged long-lost sister. When the Moroccans they met didn't understand English, Delphine switched to French, and in one restaurant, Cosima drew a series of pictures for a waiter, who took their information card after nodding and helping them pronounce the word “sister” in Arabic. 

In a bookstore on their third day, a customer said he thought he knew Malika, and then snapped a picture of Cosima's face without asking. 

“I will show to people,” he said, “she look like you, yes?”

“Yeah,” Cosima said, scowling at him, “she looks a lot like me. Probably has different hair, though.”

The man bent over laughing at that, and was still laughing when Delphine gave him their information card and he walked away.

“Whatever, dude,” Cosima said. Before she could linger on that interaction too long, a book display caught her eye and she gasped. “Oh fu-- I mean heck yeah!” She wound her way through the tables stacked with books and grabbed one of the books, holding it up for Delphine to see. On the cover, beneath thick yellow and white script, a boy on a broomstick tried to catch a flying ball, while a three-headed dog watched. 

Delphine smiled and made a show of checking her watch. “Finally. It's only taken you nine days.”

“Hey, we've been busy, yeah? I had other things on my mind.”

“As I recall, you got the Brazilian Portuguese edition within an hour of arriving in São Paolo, and you got the Spanish edition on our second day in Colombia.”

“You recall correctly. I very nearly missed the Rioplatense version, though. But that's 'cause I didn't know it existed.”

Delphine remembered Cosima's frantic running around Buenos Aires for a copy of _The Philosopher's Stone_ in the local Spanish dialect, finally securing one only four hours before their flight was set to take off. “Is there only one version in Arabic,” she asked, “or will you get one in every country we go to?”

“I don't know, actually. I'll have to google that later.”

Delphine checked their itinerary while Cosima bought the book. “Check to see if there's an Amharic translation, too. We might not have much time to spare for book shopping in Ethiopia.”

Cosima shrugged and thanked the clerk in Arabic. “I'm not worried about it. If I find one, I find one. If I don't, we can commission one with the money left over after we're done curing all the Ledas.”


	2. Chapter 2

They stayed in Fès for five more days, checking and rechecking every establishment they could enter for a glimpse or of information about Malika, the clone who allegedly lived there. There was a woman in a perfume shop who said she knew Malika, but hadn't seen her in years, and she had no contact information for her. She also spoke very little English, so Delphine handled the entire conversation.

“Et ses parents?” Delphine asked.

The saleswoman shook her head. “Non.” Then she rattled off a string of Moroccan French that Cosima caught pieces of, like “school” and “away,” though the hand motions helped a lot with that one. 

“She says Malika's parents moved away a long time ago,” Delphine told her when they left the shop. “She last saw Malika in 2002 or 2003 maybe, and they were never very close. They went to school together, nothing more.”

Cosima leaned against a wall outside the shop and sighed. “We could check the police station again.”

“Chérie...”

“What? They might have something.”

“If they had something, they would have called us.”

Cosima chewed on a hangnail and shook her head. “I don't know that they would. It's not like we're a super high priority for them, you know?”

“We've been there twice.”

“A third time won't hurt anybody. Come on.”

Delphine rolled her head to one side, but Cosima was already walking away. An hour later, they sat in the police station, in front of the same officer they'd seen each previous time. 

“No, madam, there is no record of her on file.”

“Could you check again, please?” Cosima asked.

“Pardon?”

“I said, could you check again, please? Check to see if she's on file anywhere. Any file, for any reason.”

He did so, and came back empty handed. “As I said, madam, there is no record of her. Perhaps you should check your own files.”

Cosima rubbed her tongue over her teeth to keep a retort from coming out, and allowed Delphine to lead her out of the station. “I'll show him where he can stick his damn files,” she muttered as soon as she could. 

“No, you won't, chérie.”

Chilly, sandy wind stung their faces, so Delphine took them into a little restaurant across the street from the station. While they waited for their food, Cosima rested her head in her hands. This hadn't happened before. They'd always had leads before. Always. Even when they needed to travel around some more to find a sister, they had always found her, or gotten some clue about where she was, even if it was as broad as “She's in Asia for the semester” or “She's gone to the mountains for a while.” There had always been something.

“Cosima...” Delphine wrapped her fingers around Cosima's forearms. “I don't think she's here.”

“Yeah, I'm getting that impression too.”

“That doesn't mean she doesn't exist.”

“Right, but she could be anywhere.” She looked up at Delphine. “Like, literally anywhere.”

“Correct. Which means... we should leave.”

Leave. Leave Fès and Morocco behind. Leave the only address they had for Malika behind. 

“Art still has translators in Toronto looking for all the sisters, including her. But, we've been here eight days,” Delphine reminded her. “That's three days longer than-”

“Look, I know. I know we agreed to five days only, but that was back in Nicaragua, and we found Dalia's parents in time, so it all worked out.”

“Yes...” Delphine had that look of forced patience on her face. “It did all work out. But Cosima, what do you think we can accomplish by staying in this city? We have no leads. We're not helping anyone by being here, and we've had to change hotel rooms twice.”

“Yeah, I was there, thanks.”

Delphine was right, too. They had looked everywhere, talked to everyone. There were no rocks left to look under, no more people with the same last name left to question. By now, a third of the population had Cosima's picture on their phones and Delphine's information card in their pockets. She let out a long breath and checked the time. 

“We'll have to hurry if we want to check out of the hotel in time.”

Delphine smiled at her. “I'll call and ask for an extension.”

* * *

After the failure of Fès, the clones in Oran and Saïda, their first stops in Algeria, were a breeze. They went to their appointments and Delphine stuck needles in them, and everyone walked away with what they thought they wanted. While Delphine was at the clinics, Cosima went to cafés and shops, still asking for Malika. She tried asking in French, which led the Algerians to laugh or cock their heads in confusion, and either walk away or switch into English for her if they could. Her Arabic was so poor it wasn't even worth trying.

“She from here?” a woman at the drugstore asked. “Your sister, yes?”

“Yes, my sister. She's from Morocco, from Fès.”

“Ah, yes, Fès.” She rang up another customer before saying more. “Beautiful city.”

“So, do you recognize her?”

“No. Sorry. You try Fès next, okay?”

* * *

Their next stop was Algiers, the capital, where two clones awaited them. This time, Cosima got the aisle seat on the bus, and stayed awake as much as possible to be their eyes and ears while Delphine dozed against the window. They arrived in Algiers at 2:30 in the morning as 7 degree C winds flapped their jackets around them on their walk from the bus station to the hotel. Inside the hotel, the lobby was bright, well-furnished, and devoid of any human activity. Cosima rang the bell and they both tried to stay upright. 

The clerk appeared, a young man trying to grow a mustache with limited success, whose name tag read _Taoufik_. 

“Oui?” he said.

Delphine responded in French, holding their credit card next to her face and saying that they'd reserved _une chambre_ under the name Dr. Cormier. The clerk's face didn't change, but he tapped at a computer, and a few minutes later they had a set of key cards for room 144. Taoufik slipped back into the back room before Cosima even picked up her luggage.

When they got in the room, they stood in the entryway and stared at the two twin beds positioned about a meter apart, with a nightstand and lamp between them. “This again,” Cosima muttered. 

Delphine stepped around her to put her bag on the bed near the window. “I'll take this one.”

“We're going to let it slide here, aren't we?”

“Unless you feel like risking a prison sentence, yes, I think we should.”

Cosima stretched her arms and rolled her head around on her shoulders. She needed a hot shower, a deep tissue massage, and a hot alcoholic beverage. “You know, when I was 18, gay sex was illegal in Virginia, too, but that didn't stop me from banging my girlfriend there over summer break.”

“That's in the US. The US is not Algeria.”

“No, but I'm just saying, laws and day-to-day life aren't always in sync.”

Delphine walked past her to the bathroom. “If you want to go downstairs to explain to Taoufik that we need one large bed, I won't stop you.”

“He probably doesn't speak English.”

Delphine poked her head around the doorframe. “I know. That's why I won't stop you.”

*

When she woke at 8, her eye sockets were pushing against her eyeballs. “Ngggghh.....” She reached out for Delphine, but found only the edge of the bed on both sides.

From somewhere outside of the bed, Delphine rustled around, zipping and unzipping bags, putting bottles on tables, and running into something solid with a loud “Putain!” The toilet flushed and water ran in the bathroom, and then a hand shook Cosima's shoulder. 

“Hey. Are you getting up?”

She squinted as much as possible and pulled her head from the pillow. “Is that necessary?”

“Euh, well, you did say you had things you wanted to do today.”

“Like what?”

“Work on your dissertation, look around for Malika, email people.”

Cosima let her head fall back down. “Can that wait?”

Delphine put the back of her hand to Cosima's forehead. “Are you not well?”

“Nnnhhh... I don't know.”

“Well, I'm supposed to be at the clinic in fifteen minutes, so I do have to go.” She kissed Cosima's temple. “I'll see you later today. Call or text if you'll be out late, okay?”

“Mhm.”

The next time she woke, Delphine's fingers stroked her hair, and Delphine herself was sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed in her blue and white blouse and her dark blue slacks, with her hair pulled back into a bun. Cosima rolled over to face her.

“Hi,” she managed. Her throat was thick and sore.

“Hi. Have you been up at all?”

“Umm... no?”

“Hm.” Delphine checked Cosima's forehead again, then put her fingers against the underside of Cosima's jaw, which hurt like a bitch. “Sore throat?” Delphine asked.

“Yeah. What time is it?”

Delphine rose and fished around in her medical bag some. “It's a little after three.”

A little after three. In the afternoon. Cosima moved her tongue around inside her mouth, hating every surface it touched. The lights were too bright, and her bladder was about to explode. With tremendous effort, she crawled out of the bed and stumbled to the bathroom, where she bumped into the sink and very nearly didn't make it on time. 

When she re-emerged, Delphine was sitting on her bed again, holding a thermometer. “Here,” she said. 

She took the thermometer and stuck it under her tongue, leaning against Delphine while they waited for it to beep. Eyes closed, Cosima drifted off again and jumped when it finally beeped. Delphine took it out and held it up. 

“Thirty-seven point five.”

“In Fahrenheit?”

Delphine paused. “In Fahrenheit it's ninety-nine point five. And you know Celsius quite well.”

Cosima stretched back out on the bed. She was more awake than she wanted to be, her throat ached, and none of her muscles wanted to move. “Maybe. It's not a fever, though.”

“Only a very mild one, and only because you've been asleep all day. If you'd been active it would be normal.” Delphine stroked her cheek and yawned. “You should keep resting, though. I'll get you something for your throat.”

She dozed off again, on top of the covers with her legs dangling off the bed. The door opening woke her this time, followed by Delphine dropping a bag from the drug store on the bed. Cosima sat up, rubbed her throat, and watched Delphine set bottles and bags on the nightstand. 

“How do you feel?”

“Alert, but like my lymph nodes are made of concrete.”

“Here. Drink as much as you can.”

It was a 16 ounce bottle of water, but it felt like shards of glass going down. Still, her headache and drowsiness improved after a few minutes, so she put on her glasses and looked at the rest of Delphine's haul. There was Algerian Robitussin, NyQuil or its local equivalent, various bags of lozenges, multi-packs of pocket-sized hand sanitizers and tissues, assorted decongestants in pill form, vitamin C chewables, and a bottle of throat spray. 

Delphine fell onto the other bed and got the contents from her other bags, which Cosima hadn't noticed until now. One had an eight-pack of Gatorade and some dried fruit, and the other had two styrofoam containers of soup. She passed one to Cosima. 

“You're very sweet,” Cosima told her.

Delphine grunted, eating her soup on the edge of her bed. “Some of this is just planning ahead. It's only a matter of time before I get whatever it is you have, and we didn't have enough supplies to deal with both of us being sick.”

“Sharing is caring, yeah?”

* * * 

The next day, while Delphine was in the neighboring Casbah district convincing another Leda to get her shot, Cosima stayed in the room. She slept in until 10 thanks to a full dose of NyQuil, ate some flatbread and hummus, and Skyped with Alison in her pajamas. 

“Are you alright?” Alison asked immediately. “You look terrible!”

“Yeah, I'm a little sick.” As if to prove her point, her throat tickled, and she coughed unproductively into her elbow. 

Alison's eyes went wide. “It's not... you're not... I mean...”

“It's not clone disease. Don't worry. Just a head cold. I don't even have a fever.”

Alison made little sympathetic noises. “It's a terrible way to spend Valentine's Day, though.”

“Valen-” Cosima froze and checked the date on her laptop. Sure enough, February 14th. That explained why Alison was wearing a heart-print sweater, and had red, white, and pink craft supplies in the background. “Fuck.”

“Don't tell me you forgot.”

“Well, we've been kind of busy.” She rubbed her forehead and ran through ideas in her head. There must be some place to buy flowers close by, or some other romantic little token that didn't take up too much space in a suitcase. 

“Of course you have,” Alison agreed. “But it's the gesture that's important, not the scale. You're in Algeria now, aren't you?”

“Yes. Algiers until tomorrow morning, then a 10:30 bus to Skikda.” She dug her knuckles into her temples. At least she'd get to sleep for this six-hour trip.

“Well, go out and buy some flowers tonight!”

“What, and carry them with us tomorrow?”

Alison huffed. “I thought lesbians were supposed to be romantic.”

“Hard to be romantic with separate beds and a bitch of a head cold. What are you doing for Donnie?”

She straightened up and smiled. “He is taking me to this lovely little French bistro in town. I'll post some pictures online, so make sure you show Delphine.”

“Why?”

“Because she's French, silly!”

“Right. I'm sure she'll love to see pictures of your food.” More coughs interrupted her, and she gulped some more Gatorade. “Anyway, you didn't answer my question. What are you doing for Donnie?”

“I just told you, we're going to dinner.”

“You said he's taking you. What are you doing for him?”

Alison blinked several times and did not answer. On the table beside the laptop, Alison's phone rang, but she silenced it with an aggressive tap. Cosima, meanwhile, coughed some more, and Alison watched. “At least you're not coughing up blood anymore,” she said. 

“Yeah. I wish I'd cough up something, though. It's kind of useless right now.”

“Well, take care of yourself. There's nothing pressing on this end of things, and it sounds like there's nothing new on yours except for your cold. And do something nice for Delphine! Don't let her know that you forgot.”

Cosima nodded. “A'right. Talk next week, yeah?”

Alison signed off, and Cosima closed her laptop with a sigh. Valentine's Day. 

Last year, of course, they hadn't done Valentine's Day. Delphine hadn't returned from Geneva until later in February, and then they were too busy catching up with each other and taking down Neolution to care much about dates. This year, though, she didn't have that excuse.

Alison was right. She really did need to do something. 

She pulled some clean clothes from her suitcase and carried them into the bathroom. Step one was to get clean, since she hadn't showered in more than two days. In the shower, she let the hot water beat against her chest and back, loosening up some of the mucus that had taken up residence there, and the steam worked its way into her sinus cavities to do the same. While she dried off and got dressed, her coughs wracked her body, until, at one point, she was bent over, hand on her chest, while her throat spasmed. Still, nothing but saliva came out. 

“Fuck,” she croaked. 

Her phone chirped with a message from Delphine. _All done. I'll be back soon._

“Fuck!”

She pulled up Google Maps and searched around the hotel. In quick walking distance there were two computer stores, a mosque, a bakery, a bookstore, and four other hotels. She clicked on the bakery as more coughs came. Maps had nothing useful about it – a 3 star rating, an address, and a picture of a nondescript store front. Not worth the attempt. 

Her throat burned, and more coughs forced their way out. She hadn't coughed this much, or this forcefully, in more than a year, and even in the pits of her illness the coughing fits had come and gone. She finished the bottle of Gatorade and searched for restaurants. It was a crap idea, but her only one. She and Delphine ate at restaurants all the goddamn time. Maybe there was an extra nice one around.

And of course, none of the restaurants had websites or menus posted. One of them had the word _roi_ in the name, which could have been promising, but then, Burger King did, too. Another one said _sardines_ , and a third called itself _Le Meilleur Couscous_

“The best couscous,” she said. “You're not really selling yourself to me with that. Sorry.”

She coughed some more. At this rate, she was starting to worry that she might actually cough up blood again because her throat was so raw. It didn't make for a romantic afternoon and evening, no matter what she decided to do. 

On the nightstand by the box of tissues and the bottles of cold medicine, she spied the bright red throat spray Delphine had bought. If there was ever a time to try it, now was it. She skimmed the instructions, tore off the plastic and the cap, and opened her mouth as wide as possible. The first squirt hit the back of her tongue and tasted like a freshly opened vinyl shower curtain. She gagged and spasmed for a moment, then pulled herself back together. The back of her tongue buzzed. 

Bottle of water in hand, she went to the bathroom. This time, as her tongue still revolted against the taste, she leaned towards the mirror and aimed with greater care for the back of her throat. Just as another cough threatened, she pushed down the top and shot a stream of medicine at the back of her mouth. It misted her tongue along the way but hit her pharynx spot on, coating the entire area and setting off her gag reflex. She threw a mouthful of water down after it to still the gagging, but it only spread the effect. Now her entire throat rippled and pushed upwards to keep it out. Swallowing wasn't possible. Breathing wasn't even possible. She grabbed at the wall and went to spit it out, but the spit became a retch, and she vomited crimson into the hotel sink. 

For a second, she flashbacks of coughing up red in other sinks and surfaces, but another wave of gagging brought up the electric blue Gatorade from earlier that day, and the image was shot. 

Once the retching stopped, she rinsed the majority of the mess down the drain and leaned against the wall, gasping for air. Her throat and tongue still prickled a little bit, but there was no more gagging. 

The door opened then, and Delphine stuck her head in the bathroom. “Hello? Cosima? Are you okay?”

“Mm.”

“What's wrong?” Delphine stepped in, still in her boots and coat, and saw the brightly colored specks on the edge of the sink.

“I don't think that's gonna work out for me,” Cosima said, pointing to the throat spray.

“No? Did it make you sick, then?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

Delphine sighed and rolled her head around. She'd had a headache that morning, but dismissed it as the result of a cheap pillow. The way she held her hand to her throat, though, made Cosima suspicious.

“Are you okay?” Cosima asked.

“Yes, I'm fine. I just, um, need to use the bathroom. Sorry.”

Cosima left and curled back up on the bed to cough some more, drinking more water as she did. She sat up again when Delphine re-emerged, hanging up her coat and removing her boots. “Does your head still hurt?”

Delphine nodded. “A little bit. It's nothing major. I am very tired, though.”

“How'd the cure go?”

“It was fine.” She pulled off her sweater and jeans, then unhooked her bra inside her shirt and pulled it out of one sleeve. “Her whole family was there. Thirteen all together, all of them getting flu shots. Her husband sat with us the whole time. He tried converting me to Islam.”

Cosima laughed, pausing to cough again. “That must've been fun.”

Delphine crawled under the covers of her bed in her underwear, T-shirt, and socks on. “He was very nice about it. I did learn a lot, actually.”

“Was it better or worse than Julia Luiz trying to save our souls for Jesus?”

“Better. Abdullah never touched me.”

That would make it better. Julia had put her hands on both of their heads for uncomfortable amounts of time while she prayed over them in. “No touching” seemed like a solid policy. “He might not be allowed to touch you.”

Delphine shook her head, her eyes already closed. “He's not. Whatever the reason, though, I'm not complaining about it. By the way, is it okay if we stay in tonight?”

“It is totally okay.”

“Good.”

Cosima watched her sink deeper into the bed. She changed back into her pajamas and turned out the lights after helping herself to another small dose of NyQuil. Delphine would nap better without Cosima coughing all the time, and Cosima might as well nap with her. Well, at the same time as her, at least. By the light on her cell phone, she stepped over to Delphine's bed and kissed her cheek. 

“Happy Valentine's Day, Delphine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feedback is appreciated, especially if I got something wrong. As long as you're nice about it, I want to hear it!


	3. Chapter 3

They arrived in Sousse in the afternoon, their last stop in Tunisia and the end of their Francophone African experience. If everything went well here, they would be in Libya in a few days, and Egypt after that. Cosima's energy level was partially recovered and the sinus headaches were gone, but she still had frequent coughing fits, and her voice cracked every couple of words. She now spent her time propping up Delphine, who insisted that she wasn't really all that sick.

“Delphine, I love you,” Cosima said, “but your eyes haven't opened completely for, like, two days. Your voice is an octave lower, and your sneezes have woken the dead. You are fucking sick.”

Delphine fell back on her bed beside Cosima. In Tunis they'd gotten a queen sized bed in their room, which was great at first, but a lot less appealing when both of them tossed and turned the whole night. Here in Sousse, they were back to separate twins, and neither of them had the energy to even comment on it.

“Okay,” Delphine said, “I'm sick. Are you happy now?”

“No. I just want you to stop pretending that you're fine. I want you to take care of yourself. I mean, I'm happy taking care of you, but you're not letting me do that, and you're pushing yourself too hard.”

As if to prove Cosima's point, Delphine rolled over to check the little beep her phone just made. “Dr. N'Jikam wants to postpone our meeting until Wednesday.” She pinched the bridge of her nose.

“And you don't have to be at the clinic until Wednesday morning, either, so tomorrow we can focus on getting rest, yeah? Maybe check out that sauna they're supposed to have.” With the chilly weather outside and the lack of heat in the hotel room, spending the day at a nice 180 degrees fahrenheit had a certain appeal. 

“Mmm... maybe. We still have a lot of arrangements to make.”

Cosima rubbed her back through her sweater. “We do. But we're not going to help anybody if you're not healthy. So you need to rest. That's what you told me the other day!”

“I can't sleep, I've told you.”

The night before, Delphine had apparently been awake for five hours while Cosima slept like a log. She'd drifted off for an hour or so on the ride into Sousse, but good sleep still aluded her. “Take some more NyQuil,” Cosima said. “Or I'll get the bar downstairs to make you a nice hot toddy.”

She shook her head. “Then I'll be hung over all morning. Is there any tea?”

Cosima checked the little complimentary beverage station near the ironing board. “Um... yes, but it all looks caffeinated.”

“Then no.”

Another coughing fit hit Cosima then, doubling her over as she pounded on her chest. The pounding never helped, but it was better than doing nothing. Once it subsided, she straightened back up and fumbled around for some more water. Delphine stayed on her bed, watching her. 

“Have you tried the throat spray again?”

“Um, no.”

“Maybe you should. It would numb your throat and...”

“It would make me vomit again. No thanks.”

“You might've done it wrong.”

Naturally, Delphine was able to use the throat spray with no problems at all. Cosima added it to the list of things Delphine did effortlessly.

Cosima picked up her purse and wrapped her scarf around her neck again. “If I did, I'm not willing to risk doing it wrong again. But I will get some more cough syrup. And some more tea.”

Delphine propped herself up on her elbows to return Cosima's kiss. “Can you get some soup, too?”

“Yup. Soup, syrup, and tea. I'll be back soon, love.”

Delphine nodded and sank back down. 

* * * 

They tried the sauna the next day, but found it packed with Scandinavian women who all knew each other and laughed too loudly at everything each of them said. Cosima got some tea loaded with valerian root and lemon balm, and Delphine drank mug after mug of it while Cosima did their laundry in the hotel's facilities and brought containers of brik and fricassé from the vendors across the street. In the evening, they drank more tea and watched the Arabic dubbing of _Downton Abbey_ on the hotel television.

On Wednesday it rained, the first time since they'd arrived in North Africa. Cosima sat at the bar in the hotel's restaurant and watched it fall in sheets over the cars and cyclists and old men in traditional burnouses hustling around with newspapers over their heads. It was just after noon, almost time for midday prayers, when the locals on the street would clear off for a moment but the tourists in the restaurant would stay. She knew these things now. She was also starting to forget that she hadn't always dropped the “h” sound in “hotel.” 

The restaurant was packed. Most of these tourists were here for the promise of a sunny beach-side vacation in a relatively progressive Arab country, the lone gunman attack of a few years ago now a distant memory. The rain, however, put the beach off limits. The business men were here too, but in fewer numbers than in Tunis or Algiers. Cosima wondered how many tourists would be in Tripoli. 

Delphine was supposed to be back by now. The clone here in Sousse had been easy to find, unlike the one in Tunis who'd gotten married and changed her name since the Leda List was compiled. Cosima double checked the time and confirmed that this clone's appointment had been for 10:30, and then she texted Delphine.

_Everything okay?_

While she waited for a reply, she scrolled through her Facebook feed, finding very little that was new since that morning. Alison posted pictures of a black forest cheesecake from all angles; Cosima's mother posted memes that she thought were hilarious and Cosima had seen ten years ago; Scott cracked science jokes; her father ranted about Republicans. Same old, same old. She thought about reading the news, but she'd done that earlier and had no desire to repeat the experience. She was nervous enough about going to Libya without reading that the country was “mired in chaos” and ruled by “men with guns.” She wanted to keep her worries confined to the language barrier. 

“Anything else?” The bartender gestured to her empty tea cup. 

“Yeah. Another one. Thank you. Merci. Shukraan (شكرا.)”

He gave her an indulgent smile and got her more hot water and some fresh tea. 

Instagram yielded no new results, either. Five of the Ledas were hyper active there, posting so many photos of their personal lives that Cosima felt closer to them than to most of her own cousins at this point, and was becoming personally invested in the little drama that was brewing in the love life of one of the Austrian sisters. All total, Cosima tracked 33 Ledas through Instagram and 34 on Twitter, 11 of which were on both. None so far had symptoms of clone disease that they were sharing on social media, though the Leda in Cape Town, South Africa, did seem to have a worrying rash on her torso that had nothing to do with being a clone, but probably with a swimming in the ocean.

Her phone buzzed. _Difficult patient._ Delphine said.

Cosima arched an eyebrow. That could mean many things. _And?_

A reply wasn't immediately forthcoming, and Cosima rubbed her face to keep from swearing. The restaurant was loud enough that she might've gotten away with it, but it was better not to risk it, even surrounded by foreigners. She tried to look out the window but a man pushed up to the bar and blocked the view. He was tall and broad, wearing what Cosima called the “I yell at my family in public” uniform.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Can we get a table, please? We've been waiting fifteen minutes!”

Cosima rolled her eyes and went back to her phone. No reply from Delphine, but another cake picture from Alison on Facebook – red velvet this time. 

She pulled up Twitter and perked up again. A clone from southern California they hadn't made contact with yet finally posted something. She was in Cambodia, it turned out, and she had a long thread about politics and southeast Asian history that was actually quite fascinating. And then Delphine replied to her text.

_Still trying._

“Still trying? That doesn't help, Delphine.” She tapped out her response. _Do you need anything? Can I help?_

She'd been at the bar for over an hour. She could have been up in their room, working on her thesis, or napping, or masturbating, or catching up on her reading. But Delphine had asked her to be here, to meet her after her 10:30 appointment at the clinic, because she was bringing one of her contacts from MSF, and this was an Important Contact. Cosima was wearing her nice shirt, for fuck's sake, and she'd ironed her pants. They were going to eat lunch together, their treat for this Important Contact, so Cosima had not eaten since 8:30 that morning. 

She typed some more. _Do you have an ETA?_

Three minutes later, as she watched the loud man yell at his son for touching the floral arrangement on the table they'd finally gotten, her phone buzzed. Her excitement faded when she saw it was just an email from her mother.

_Cosima,_

_Here's that dress company I told you about, based out of the City, very social-justice and queer oriented and I think right up your alley. It's pricey but we'd be happy to help you out if...._

She closed the message without finishing it. “I am not dress shopping online, goddamn it,” she muttered. “How many times do I have to f.... ugh. _Mother_.” She rubbed her face again and checked the time.

12:40 pm. Five minutes since her last message to Delphine, and more than two hours since the appointment at the clinic started. 

A bearded man in a West Virginia University sweatshirt sat down beside her, apologized when he brushed against her knee, and placed his order with the bar tender in Arabic. Once the bartender left, he laced his fingers together and turned to Cosima. “Heckuva weather we're having, yeah?”

“Yup. Sure is.”

“You know, I been coming here for ten years, and I swear this is the first time I've seen it rain.”

“Hm.”

He tapped the bar top. “Are those dreads you've got?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so! They look good!” He turned a little on his stool to face her more. “Usually white girls can't pull those off, but yours look really good!”

“Thank you.” She checked her phone again. 12:45, and no new messages. 

“Can I ask, if you don't mind, what you did to make 'em stay so well? Like, my cousin tried dreads, and she's as white as me, and her hair _stank_!” He laughed and bumped into her knee again. “Like, it was just straight up matted and shit. What's your secret?”

She drained her tea and looked him in the eye. “I've been genetically engineered.”

He chortled. “Okay. Fair enough. I shouldn't have asked; I'm sorry.”

Cosima raised her eyebrows and did not respond. The bartender came with his order then – a steaming bowl of stew with a side of bread and a bottle of beer. The stew smelled amazing, and she still hadn't gotten any messages from Delphine, so she called the bartender back over and ordered a bowl for herself. While she waited, the cups of tea crept up on her and she slid off to the ladies' room, leaving her coat on the stool, pockets empty.

While she peed, she texted Delphine again. _Is everything okay over there?_

The clinic was on the same block as their hotel, and Cosima would have gone there herself an hour ago if they weren't terrified of accidental clone meet ups. 

She also finished her mother's email about that dress shop in San Fransisco, which, Sally was keen to point out, also did tailoring for suits. Great. 

Back at the bar, Cosima's coat was still there, along with her food and a fresh cup of tea. The WVU man was wrapped up in conversation with a guy to his left, thankfully, and now there was a different customer to Cosima's right – a woman with short wavy black hair, wearing a collared white shirt. As she walked towards her own seat, Cosima glanced down at the woman's shoes. Sure enough, Keens, or Keens equivalents. Cosima's phone buzzed.

_Yes_ was all Delphine had to say. No ETA, no other information. Cosima put her phone back in her purse.

“Excuse me,” she said as she squeezed in between the two other customers to sit down. 

“Sure, no problem,” the woman said, smiling at her. The WVU man did not seem to notice her return. “I hope no one was sitting here?”

“Oh, no,” Cosima assured her. “You're fine.”

The soup was delicious, but spicier than she'd anticipated, so she got a glass of water and another serving of bread to help it go down. In minutes her sinuses opened up and she needed extra napkins, as well. The woman beside her got a salad and a glass of wine, and smiled at Cosima when she drained her water glass. 

“A bit spicy, is it?” She was British, or Irish, judging by her accent.

Cosima nodded. The water helped, but her eyes watered and her nose ran, and it was a damn good thing she wasn't trying to look good right now. She thought of Delphine's MSF contact and checked her phone again. It was 1:10. No new messages. “Whatever.” She dropped it back in her purse and gave the rest of her soup her full attention. When she'd finished, she wiped the bowl with some more bread and finished her third glass of water. Beside her, the dark haired British woman watched her, sideways. 

“I guess it was good,” the woman said. 

“Yeah. Delicious.” She pointed to the half-full salad plate in front of her bar neighbor. “Yours wasn't?”

The other woman shrugged. “I keep forgetting that I don't like tomatoes. I order them every so often, thinking that some dish looks rather good, and then I eat one, and remember.”

Cosima smiled. “I'm like that with oysters and clams. Someone will rave about how good they are, and swear they've got a good recipe, but it's always like eating a snot ball out of a shell.”

The other woman laughed at that, throwing her head back and showing off her neck in the process. “That is such an apt way to put it! They really are nature's little snot balls, aren't they? Tell me, have you read _Tipping the Velvet_?”

If she hadn't suspected this woman was queer before, she sure did now. More than suspected. Cosima blushed a little and grinned. “I read it when I was, like, twenty. So yeah, but it's been a while.”

“Well, I've read it several times, and every single time, when she's going on and on about oysters and how she prepares them and all that, I just have to shake my head, because I find oysters absolutely disgusting, just as you do.”

“Are they better or worse than tomatoes?”

“Worse. A thousand times worse.” She picked around the tomatoes on her plate, eating pieces of cheese and lettuce speared on her fork. “If I may ask, what brings you to Tunisia?”

“Oh, it's a, uh, a medical trip, of sorts.”

“Hm, I see. Like, medical tourism sort of thing? I've heard of that, and you're American, I take it?”

“I am, yeah. No, it's not for me. I mean, I'm not getting treated for anything.” She twisted her napkin between her fingers, trying hard to look nonchalant.

“You're doing the treating, then, perhaps?”

“Something like that.” 

“Cosima?”

She spun around to find Delphine three feet behind her, frowning. “Oh, hey! When did you get here?”

“I got here a few minutes ago, as I said in my message. Did you get my message?”

Cosima dug in her purse for her phone. “The last message I got just said...” She looked at her phone. Sure enough, two new messages from Delphine, at 1:12 and 1:20. It was now 1:27. “Shit.”

“You haven't reserved a table, then, I take it.”

“They wouldn't let me unless I could give a more specific time!”

“Well, if you'd checked your messages, you would have had one. But now we have to wait.” She gestured over to the hostess stand, where a West African man in a linen suit waved and headed in their direction through the other diners. “He has a busy schedule, you know. He is a doing us a favor.”

Cosima gathered her coat and purse. The bartender had their room number to charge for the meal, thankfully. Fussing over credit card payments wouldn't improve either of their moods. “I do know that, and actually, Delphine, I've been checking my messages all day, and you weren't sending any, so maybe you should lay off a little bit?”

It was not the right thing to say, and it was not the right time to say it, but it came out of Cosima's mouth anyway. Delphine's eyebrows went up. She glanced over at the woman to Cosima's right, who was smart enough to pretend she wasn't listening. “Well,” Delphine said, “at least you made a new friend.”

The man in the linen suit reached them and gave Cosima a broad smile. 

“Dr. N'Jikam,” Delphine said, “this is Cosima Niehaus, my research partner.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Niehaus. Dr. Simplice N'Jikam, from Médecins Sans Frontières. Dr. Cormier and I used to work together. Perhaps she's mentioned me.”

She put her best smile on for him and shook his hand. “Yes, she has. It's a pleasure to meet you, too.”

As dramatic as Delphine was about waiting for a table, they only had to wait five minutes to get one. Cosima sat across from Delphine, with Dr. N'Jikam to her left. Predictably, Cosima wasn't very hungry any more, but she ordered a carrot salad with hard boiled eggs and another cup of tea. Delphine ordered a lamb platter with couscous and vegetables. She must not have eaten since that morning, either. At least she seemed healthier than she had the day before. 

Dr. N'Jikam started off the conversation as soon as they'd ordered. “So, you are going to Yemen.”

Delphine nodded. “That's correct.”

“When do you plan to be there, and for how long?”

“We're not sure exactly,” Cosima said. “It depends on how successful we are there. Right now, we have five days scheduled in early March, but that could change.”

The waiter brought their drinks – water for Delphine, coffee for Dr. N'Jikam, and mint tea for Cosima.

“And what exactly,” Dr. N'Jikam asked Delphine, “is your measure of success for this trip? What is your objective?”

“We've identified three women with a specific phenotype that puts them at risk for a terminal condition, and we plan to inoculate them against it, or cure them if they've already developed symptoms.”

His eyebrows rose. “What condition is that?”

“It's only recently been discovered, so there's not an agreed-upon name for it yet.”

“I see. And you've already identified patients already? How?”

“It's a long story. Some of our connections back in Canada gave us the information.”

The answer satisfied him, and he sipped on his coffee. For Cosima, though, the effects of her earlier bowl of soup and all the accompanying water became pressing, so she excused herself, meeting Delphine's “wtf” look with a wide eyes. Whatever. It would be worse to sit there bouncing and in pain, unable to focus. Waiting in line for the ladies room for the second time, she rummaged in her purse for her bottle of TUMS, and took two. 

Back at the table, the food had once again arrived in her absence. Squeezed onto the table between the plates, glasses, silverware, decorative flower arrangement, and complimentary flatbread, Dr. N'Jikam had his tablet and a pad of line-free paper, which he and Delphine crouched over between bites. Delphine glanced at her when she sat down, and continued her conversation with Dr. N'Jikam in French.

Cosima ate her salad and listened, picking out about half of what Delphine said and less than a quarter of what Dr. N'Jikam said. She'd read that Cameroonian French was a little different than Canadian or Parisian French, but she hadn't expected such a great difference. But then, Delphine wasn't having any such difficulties. From what Cosima understood, they talked about the Yemeni refugee crisis, camps, transportation options, and money, and then Dr. N'Jikam said something that made Delphine laugh. Cosima raised her eyebrows at her, hoping for a translation, but none came. 

At the end of the meal, Delphine excused herself to use the restroom, letting Cosima handle paying for the meal. 

“How was it?” she asked Dr. N'Jikam.

“Pardon? Oh, it was excellent,” he said. He dabbed at his lips with the napkin and smiled at her. “Thank you.”

“You're very welcome,” Cosima said. The food and the rain made her sleepy, but she needed to keep up appearances. “So, uh, how long have you been with MSF?”

“A long time. Twenty years, almost. And I've been, oh, I've been everywhere.” He laughed at that, so she smiled along. “But we've been talking the whole time, and you've said very little. Tell me, Miss Nyehouse, is it Nyehouse or Neuhaus? I can't remember.”

“Uh, Niehaus, actually, but that's not important.”

“It's important to me.” Another grin. “So tell me, Miss Niehaus, how long are you working for Dr. Cormier?”

“Well, I've been working _with_ her for about three years now.”

“Three years, okay. I've known her for almost five years, since right after her doctorate. I wasn't aware before that she had any students.”

“She doesn't.”

He paused, hand midair on its way to adjust his glasses. “No? I thought that...”

“Wait, did she tell you that I'm her _student_?”

Dr. N'Jikam did not miss the way Cosima leaned over the table as she spoke, and he leaned back to compensate. “Oh,” he laughed, “I don't remember! You know, as we age, ours minds are not so good.”

“Right. Okay.”

He left as soon as Delphine got back, shaking their hands again and repeating his best wishes and his pleasure at having met them both. Delphine promised to keep in touch throughout their travels.

At the elevators, Cosima told Delphine, “You know, if you didn't need me to be there, you could have just said so.”

Delphine rolled her head around on her shoulders. “What are you talking about?”

“You know I understood like, less than half of that entire conversation. You made it pretty obvious you didn't need my contribution.”

Delphine sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. An elevator at the end of the row dinged, and they hustled to get on it along with a gaggle of rain soaked tourists. They flattened themselves against the back wall. “He prefers speaking in French,” Delphine said. 

“Does he really. English didn't seem to be much an issue for him when we first sat down, or after you'd gone to the bathroom.”

The elevator stopped to let some people off at the third floor, and replace them with a Japanese couple in bath robes, fresh from the third floor sauna. Cosima could have been at the sauna during that entire lunch, and it wouldn't have mattered. Whatever.

“How about our patient?” she asked. “You said she was difficult.”

“She refused the vaccination. Nothing I said, nothing her doctor said, convinced her, and she left without it. After talking my ears off about every medical problem she's ever had, and how doctors are responsible for every single one of them.”

“Oh sh... shoot, really?” That had never happened before. Usually, once the doctor explained it, the patient accepted the vaccine. The trick was often just getting them into the doctor's office to begin with.

“Really. She claims that vaccines made her infertile.”

The elevator stopped at the eighth floor and let out everyone else, then moved on up to the tenth, where Cosima and Delphine got off. 

“The doctor is trying to bring her back the day after tomorrow,” Delphine said. “If she still refuses, though...”

“She won't. We'll think of something.” Cosima reached for her arm, but Delphine moved away to unlocked the door and push it open. 

Inside the room, Delphine set up her papers on her bed, and sat in the armchair next to it with her laptop. “Dr. N'Jikam sent us both a list of other contacts we should talk to. Some are in Libya, which he doesn't know as much about, but cautions us against visiting.”

Cosima opened her laptop on the desk. She had had other ideas for the afternoon, especially since it seemed they'd be staying in Sousse longer than originally planned. Delphine was buried in her work, though, chewing on a thumbnail, so Cosima might as well follow suit. 

“Great. Sounds like a perfect afternoon.”

* * *

That night, after pouring over Dr. N'Jikam's information, calling and emailing his contacts in Yemen, Libya, and a Jordanian refugee camp, and a last minute phone call with one of Art's Arabic translators, the walls of their little hotel room were pressing in against both of them. Cosima's eyes hurt from differentiating tiny Arabic words from other tiny Arabic words and staring at screens, but there was one more email to write. 

_Dear Dr. Lacrabére,_

_I was directed to you by Dr. Simplice N'Jikam of Médecins Sans Frontières because_

“It goes the other way.”

“Huh?”

Delphine stood behind her, one hand in her damp hair. “It's Dr. Lacrabère, not Lacrabére. You need the accent grave, not aigu.”

“Oh. Shit. Thank you.”

Delphine walked on towards their suitcase and said, “It's not Spanish.”

“Yeah, I'm aware of that, thanks.” She finished the email, watching Delphine's eyebrows do that sarcastic little wiggle in her peripheral vision. “By the way, did you tell Dr. N'Jikam that I'm your student?”

“What?”

“He thought I was your student. Like, your graduate student or something.”

Delphine dug around her suitcase for a bottle of lotion. “I don't know why. I introduced you as my research partner. You were there when I introduced you, yes?”

“Well, yeah, but...”

“But what?”

“I dunno. It was just weird, that's all.”

“Okay.” She sat on the edge of her bed and rubbed lotion into feet. “You should take your shower now, so you're not up too late. I'm going to talk to the doctor at the clinic again tomorrow.”

Cosima refrained from replying with “yes, Dr. Cormier,” but she got up and gathered her shower things. At the bathroom door she turned back and saw Delphine massaging lotion into her left calf, her eyes closed. 

The hotel bathroom was nice, with a bathtub and strong water pressure from the shower head. She let the water beat against her back, her head bowed. When she got out of the shower later, Delphine would probably be in bed. A different bed, because of course no one could know they were lovers, so they had separate twin beds. Again. Delphine's eyes would be covered, and she'd be turned away from Cosima because the light was on Cosima's side of the room. She would not want to talk, either about important topics or trivial ones. And then she would get up early in the morning to try convincing their sister here in Sousse that she needed a vaccine. And Cosima would.... what?

Maybe she'd stay in tomorrow. The forecast called for more rain, after all. She could work on her dissertation, enter more data and run some preliminary stats on them. She could go back to the restaurant and drink a couple more gallons of mint tea. She could stay in bed all day, and it wouldn't make much of a difference.

She turned off the shower and leaned against the tile wall. How long would it take for Delphine to wonder what she was doing in here, or what was taking her so long? Or was Delphine still so annoyed with her that she was happy to have Cosima out of the bedroom for a while? 

The steam from the shower swirling around her, she slid down in the bathtub, her face in her hands. Tears pushed out of her eyes before she could stop them, and then she was sobbing. 

A minute or so later, the door opened, and Cosima took some deep breaths to try to gain some control, hands still over her face.

“Cosima? Hey, hey, hey....” And then Delphine's hands were on her neck, and her arm was around her shoulders. “Shh... come here.”

She leaned onto Delphine's shoulder and cried some more, soaking her T-shirt and clinging to her arms with wet fingers. “I'm sorry,” she managed. “I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not seeing your messages, for not knowing French better, for not helping you cure the Ledas, for everything.”

Delphine stroked her arms and her back and kissed her head. “Chérie, it's okay. I don't expect you to know French very well, and you cannot help me with the Ledas any more than you already are. You know that. You already do so much for them, anyway. And the thing with the messages was just a mistake, a misunderstanding. It's okay.”

“It didn't seem that okay earlier.”

Delphine's chest rose and fell as she sighed. “I was just... irritated earlier. That's all. I'm sorry I took it out on you.”

Cosima held on to her, nose in the crook of her neck. Delphine had some new jasmine-scented body wash that smelled okay, but didn't smell like Delphine. Cosima wanted her to smell liked Delphine again, goddammit. “I love you,” she whispered.

“I know. Je t'aime aussi.” She kissed her eyes, her lips, and the tip of her nose. “We should get you out of this tub, though.”

“Yeah, this isn't very comfortable.” She let Delphine help her out of the tub and into a towel. “Are you still mad at me?” 

“No,” Delphine said. “I was, but I'm not anymore.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I was a little bit pissed at you, too.”

“Are you still?”

She shook her head and finished drying herself off. “No, not anymore. I... I can see why you were upset. I should've just kept my phone out the whole time so I'd see your messages, and...”

Delphine folded the towel in half and hung it up on the rod next to hers. “Maybe. I don't think I would've been quite so upset with you if you hadn't been talking to that girl, though, if we're being completely honest.”

“That _girl_?” Cosima smiled now as she pulled on her shorts. “She's, like, our age or older.”

“Oh? Is she?” 

There was an edge in Delphine's voice, so Cosima put her hands on Delphine's waist. “I didn't ask, and she didn't tell me. There is nothing for you to worry about. I'm engaged to you, and nobody else.” She kissed her, but pulled back after a moment. “I mean, we are still engaged, aren't we?”

Delphine's laugh turned into a cough. “Yes, we are still engaged! Just because we can't tell everyone doesn't change that fact. Now come on, let's go to bed.”

Cosima tucked herself into bed and watched Delphine tweeze her eyebrows with the help of a pocket mirror. Delphine did that most nights, and some mornings, sometimes also yanking hairs from her nostrils in ways that made Cosima's eyes water just watching her do it. “What would your eyebrows look like if you didn't do that?” she asked.

“Euhh... let's not find out, okay?” She got one more hair from her left eyebrow and closed the mirror, then turned off the overhead light and sat on the edge of Cosima's bed, looking down at her. “I want to stay attractive for you as long as possible.”

“Yeah, same here. I mean, for myself. For you.” She wasn't terribly attractive at the moment, of course, but she wasn't going to bring that up.

Delphine rubbed Cosima's abdomen through the blankets. “I'm sorry the beds are so small.”

“It's not your fault. And it's not forever. Here.” She scooted all the way to one side and pulled the blanket back. “You can climb in for a minute if you want.”

“A minute.” Delphine stretched herself out under the heavy blankets and faced Cosima. “I think we're both very tired.”

“Yeah, and you're still sick, even if you're moving around better.” She linked her fingers with Delphine's. “I don't want you to think that I don't appreciate everything you do. For us, I mean. For all of us.”

Delphine kissed her eyes, damp again with tears. “I don't think that. I know that you do.”

“Good.”

“And I don't do any of it by myself. I _couldn't_ do any of it by myself, and I would never want to.”

Cosima thought of Delphine earlier that day, spending hours trying to convince a clone that she had a condition that would kill her one day. “Do you want me to go to the clinic with you? To try convincing our skeptical Tunisian sister?”

Delphine gave an amused little huff. “I would like that very much, but I'm not sure it's a good idea.”

“Right. Probably not.” She tucked herself as close to Delphine as possible, angling her face so that Delphine wasn't breathing directly into her eyes. Delphine wiggled her arm so she could hold Cosima's hand between their faces.

“Of course she's allowed to refuse, but I have some ideas that might convince her.”

“Ideas that don't involve clone disclosure.”

“Of course.”

“Are we still doing our five day rule if she keeps refusing?”

Delphine groaned. “No. I think, if she refuses a second time, we let her refuse, and we move on. She'll have our information, we'll have hers, and we can always come back. I am not arguing with her for five days.”

“Fair enough. That sounds like a plan, then. We really do need to come up with a decent name for this disease, though. Maybe not tonight, but some time before we've cured everybody.” 

“I've been thinking of one, actually. I thought of it today, when Inès was questioning everything I said.”

“Yeah?” Cosima propped herself up a few inches. “Can I hear it?”

“I was thinking we could call it Fitzsimmon's Carcinoma.”

Cosima remembered the chipper swim coach whose body had taught them so much about what their disease was and the ways that it couldn't be treated, and she smiled. “I like it.”

“I hoped you would.” She pulled Cosima closer and snuggled against her body. “I didn't want to name it without your permission.”

“Well, you have my enthusiastic permission to use it. I'll tell the sestras tomorrow.” She yawned into Delphine's chest and kissed her her collarbone. “Je t'aime,” she whispered.

Delphine giggled. “I love you, too. Very much.”

And with one hand tucked into Delphine's, and the fingers on her other hand hooked on the waist of Delphine's shorts, Cosima drifted off to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Hala, the Libyan clone living in Tripoli, came to her doctor's house to be treated. She was slender, with Rachel Duncan posture and square Gucci sunglasses tucked into her hijab. Her husband Khaled was with her, dressed in Armani. Delphine and Dr. El Gidi met them at the threshold of the house, flanked by Ali and Ahmed, and their guns. Delphine and Dr. El Gidi smiled at the couple, who did not smile back. 

Ali patted down the husband. Surprisingly, Khaled had never been Hala's monitor. He probably knew as little about her biology as Hala herself did.

While Ali check the husband, Ahmed approached Hala, but did not attempt to touch her. Instead, he gestured for Delphine to come over. “Woman,” he said. “You search.”

They'd expected that. Still, she flushed as Hala raised her arms with a dramatic head roll, and she apologized as she patted her hands over Hala's sides and legs, trying to keep her hands flat and fully aware that Cosima was watching from crack in the curtains upstairs. She was probably laughing. When Delphine was finished, she put a few feet between herself and Hala, and Ahmed sneered and shook his head. Fine. He could think whatever he wanted. 

Hala and her husband had their own security team, too, of course. People with that kind of money in Libya would vanish quickly without one. The female guard searched Delphine, and one of the men searched Dr. El Gidi, while the other members sized up Ali and Ahmed.

Inside the doctor's house, Hala stayed silent while her husband asked several questions in Arabic, and her doctor answered with a soothing tone and open-handed gestures. She was lying again, promising to cure this woman's infertility in order to save her life, backed up by Dr. El Gidi's assurances of her honesty. By the time Hala and her husband realized the lie, Delphine and Cosima would be long gone. It would be Dr. El Gidi's problem then. Unless he decided to take up their offer of expedited immigration to Canada. 

That night, after dinner with the El Gidi family, they sat with the doctor in his study. He poured them cognac, adding Delphine's to a cup of hot tea to ease what remained of her sore throat, and slipped easily back into English. 

“Dr. Cormier,” he said, “you are a monitor, too, yes?”

She took a deep breath, aware that Ali, just outside the door, also spoke English. “Yes. I was Cosima's monitor.”

His plump cheeks widened as he looked to Cosima. “Of course. You are lucky, Miss Niehaus.”

Cosima sipped her cognac with wide eyes. “Um... I guess?”

He laughed. “Do not be so coy, Miss Niehaus. I am telling you that I know. That I understand the nature of monitor and subject. I was a monitor, myself, for the lady today, you know.”

“Uh... yeah. I, um, I heard.” She and Delphine exchanged a long glance. 

“You were her monitor for many years,” Delphine confirmed. “Not her husband, as most monitors are.”

“Monitors are those who are closest to their subjects. That is the goal.”

Cosima cleared her throat and looked like she wanted to laugh, too. “Does, uh, does her husband know? About how _close_ you are to his wife?”

Dr. El Gidi shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. You could ask him, but we are all beneath his attention. Besides, he's a politician; he and everyone he knows is unfaithful. Hala trusts me most, that much he knows, too. And you-” He pointed to Cosima. “-trust Dr. Cormier the most, correct?”

She wouldn't have faulted Cosima for pausing before answering, or even for saying _No._ After all, it was Cosima's sisters, not Delphine, who had never lied to her. 

But Cosima didn't pause. “Yes,” she said, and Delphine's heart melted into her shoes. 

“You are good to be careful,” Dr. El Gidi went on. “This is a dangerous place, a dangerous region, for people like you. Do whatever you must to stay careful. Women like you, usually not so bad as for men, but sometimes worse.”

Delphine shifted in her seat. She knew what he meant, and why he wasn't being specific. Ali could be confused, and that would be okay, but he could never find out. He could guard infidels because he considered himself an infidel, and a genuine human clone would fascinate him, but lesbians, even bisexuals, were another story. 

“Thank you,” she said. “For the warning.”

* * *

Ali accompanied them from Tripoli all the way to Alexandria, past the multilingual “Welcome to Egypt” signs and baggage claim, and out onto the bustling street. He didn't have his gun with him, unless he'd hidden it _very well_ , but his bulk, tight black shirt, cargo pants, and crew cut made people think twice about approaching him. By extension, they left Delphine and Cosima alone, too. 

He'd stuck with them their entire time in Libya, screening every room, every location they went to for suspicious people of any kind, and checking with them about safe and unsafe areas of the city, though they hadn't explored much at all. Now, when they finally shook his hand by the open door of their taxi, and wished him good luck and safety back in Libya, Ali looked like he wasn't sure what to do next. 

“You are returning to Tripoli, aren't you?” Delphine asked him. 

“Ehhh...”

Cosima was already in the car, but she stuck her head out again. “Dude, you told them you were coming back. They're kind of counting on you.”

“I know, I know. Of course, I go back. But maybe, one day in Egypt, and then go back.”

Delphine grinned. He was trying so hard to be tough, to seem pragmatic, but the whimsical look on his face was hard to hide as he looked towards the peaceful, bustling city. There were guards, still, and repression, but no war, and a better economy. Here in Alexandria, he could restart his engineering career if he wanted to. “Whatever you decide to do, you know how to reach us. Okay?”

He nodded, arms tight across his chest. “Okay.”

“Okay. Goodbye, Ali.”

“Goodbye, Delphine.”

In the taxi, as they sped away from the airport and into the city, Cosima giggled. “Oh my god, he has such a crush on you.”

“Yes, thank you, I noticed that.” She had known it, hell, everyone had known it, for their entire three day stay in Tripoli. Ali had never acted inappropriately, thankfully. He and Ahmed were consummate professionals. Ahmed, though, never lingered to ask Delphine about where she'd learned English, or what she thought about international politics, or to talk about the year he'd spent in Vancouver as a teenager. Ahmed's face never pinked up the way Ali's did when Delphine smiled at him. 

“You think he might actually stick around here?” Cosima asked.

“I think he might be wise to stick around somewhere other than Libya. For the moment, at least. But I don't know what he'll do.”

“Hey, true that. You gave him Art's info, right? In case he wants to hightail it back to Canada?”

“I did.”

“Well, then, that's all we can really do, isn't it?”

Delphine nodded, wishing they could do more. Ali had his parents and a disabled sister back in Tripoli, though, and she doubted Art would be able to get all of them into Toronto. She took a deep breath and focused on where they were that day, putting Ali's troubles behind her.

Their hotel overlooked the Mediterranean, and immediately after getting into the room, Cosima pranced over to the balcony to lean into the view. While she was out there, Delphine stretched and soaked in the relative security of not being in the middle of a civil war. For the moment. 

_One war zone down, two and a half to go._

She leaned over to touch her toes and hoped the number would not increase. Ethiopia had legitimate political protests, but didn't seem headed towards violence. Ditto for Iran. Turkey they kept a close eye on, but seemed safe enough now. Of course, any country could explode with unrest at any time, even in Europe. It wasn't much good to dwell on possibilities.

And at the moment, they were not in a war zone, they had made contact with the Leda in town, and both she and Cosima had finally shaken their head colds. There were reasons to be happy. 

On the balcony, she stood a few feet away from Cosima. It was getting easier, this habit of not showing affection in public. At least here they had their own private room, which made a nice change from the sofa and day bed in Dr. El Gidi's house.

“It feels like San Fran,” Cosima said. “Maybe a few degrees warmer.”

Delphine wrapped her jacket tighter. “When you take me there to visit, we can look over the water and reminisce about the month we spent in North Africa.”

She grinned. “You bet your ass we will. That reminds me, though, I should check my messages.”

With a dramatic slouch, Cosima pulled herself from the railing and the view of the sea, and went back into the room. Delphine followed and closed the door to keep the wind out. In Libya, they'd had phone reception but not internet, and the cost of calls and texts were astronomical. Cosima had called Alison once a day from Tripoli, to tell her they were alive and safe, and nothing more. The rest of the time, they kept their phones off or on airplane mode. Now they sat on the edges of their beds waiting for them to power back up, and Delphine giggled. 

“It's like the day Sarah gave Kira her phone back.”

Cosima laughed. “God, I know. And she lost hers for a whole week, the poor thing.”

“She deserved it.”

“Eh.” Cosima lay back on her bed, the phone coming to life beside her. “If I'd had a cell phone at her age, I would've been looking at the same things.”

“And your mother probably would've taken it away from you, too.”

On cue, Cosima's phone blooped and beeped and buzzed, and one of those sounds was certain to be Sally Niehaus checking in. “You know Sarah only took it away because Alison told her to,” Cosima said. 

“I suspected as much.” Delphine's phone was much quieter when it regained its full potential. There was a group text from Art, a voicemail from a Moroccan phone number, and an email from MSF asking her to donate money. All of them could wait a little bit longer. “What would you have told Sarah to do? For that matter, what would you have done, if you found your nine-year-old daughter looking at inappropriate material on her cell phone?”

Cosima blew out a noisy breath. “Are we talking about my parenting skills now?”

“I'm curious.”

Cosima scrolled through her messages some more before answering. “Well, first of all, I am not a parent, so I don't know how much my opinion matters in this case. But, since you're curious... I think I would talk to Kira – I mean, this hypothetical daughter of mine – about what she was looking at, what she thought about it, etc. I'd try to explain that it's not reflective of real life, it's exaggerated, all that good stuff.” She flopped her head over to look at Delphine. “Does that answer your question?”

“So you wouldn't punish her?”

“That would not be my first step, no. What about you?”

She laughed. “Honestly? I would take her phone away. Just like Sarah did.”

Cosima didn't respond to that, but arched her eyebrows and went back to looking at her phone. It wasn't the first time they'd talked about hypothetical children, but it was the first time they'd talked about how they might parent. 

“Well,” Delphine said, “if we ever find ourselves in charge of a nine-year-old, I'm sure we'll find a way to compromise.”

“Hmm. I guess so. Holy shit, the twins are turning one this Friday! God, all that shit was a whole year ago...” She turned her phone to show Delphine the mass birthday party announcement from Alison that for some reason had not gotten to Delphine.

“That will be an interesting birthday party.”

Cosima giggled. “How much you wanna bet Helena eats the entire cake?”

“Of course she will. Are you all getting your own cakes for Clone Fest?”

“I have no idea.” Cosima paused to play a voicemail from her mother, which was just as fraught with worry as they expected. Then she pointed to Delphine's phone. “Did you get anything good?”

She swiped her phone back open and played the voicemail from the Moroccan number. Once Cosima saw that, she sat straight up, but went limp again when they heard Dr. Klein's voice, leaving a message for “Keith.” Whoever Keith was, he apparently had a Canadian number and needed to call Dr. Klein back about his test scores. 

“What the hell?” Cosima muttered after Delphine closed voicemail and took her phone off speaker. “How many Canadian numbers does he call on the reg that he'd mess that up?”

The rest of Cosima's messages were more appropriate. She got the same group message from Art about a translator needing some assistance in Toronto. Sarah sent her a picture of herself dressed as Cosima for Charlotte's recent teacher conference, though the ensemble missed Cosima's red coat. There were Niehaus family updates and clone family updates, and updates from Scott and Hell Wizard about cell cultures and equipment performance. It took her over an hour to go through all of them, while Delphine showered and set out their things. 

“Yemen's gonna be even worse,” Cosima said when Delphine stepped out of the bathroom. “And Syria.”

“Worse than Libya, you mean?”

“Yeah. I'm not talking about the dangerous parts, although that... is a thing, for sure. I'm talking about the number of goddamn messages I have piled up after three goddamn days. And most of them aren't, like, clone business contacts. I just know too many people.”

Delphine changed into clean clothes and shook some more water from her ears. “Let me guess, though, half of them are from your mother and Alison.”

“More like a third, but, yeah.”

“They worry more than the others when they can't reach us. When they can't reach you, I mean.”

“It's _us!_ They worry about you, too.”

“Maybe. When we're with MSF and the others, we'll be with people who have emergency communications, though. If something goes wrong, we can still reach out, just like in Libya. Ethiopia will be trickier.”

“Oh, yeah, we'll be out in the sticks, won't we?”

“Quite probably.”

* * *

At 10:05 the next morning, while Delphine rode the bus back from the clinic, her phone beeped to notify her of a group message. There was a picture of Cosima, mouth wide in a selfie with a sign reading BIBLIOTECA ALEXANDRINA. The message below was in all caps, too. _OMG YOU GUYS I'M AT THE FRIKKIN LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA!!!!!11!_

Delphine snorted. She could picture Cosima typing the exclamation points, then back spacing to enter a few 1s. She snorted again when the first reply came in, from Scott.

_Dude wtf it's 3 am_

She removed herself from the group message before any other sleepy North Americans replied, but her phone beeped again. This time, the message was only for her. 

_Let me know when you get here_ and a kissy face emoji.

Nearly an hour later, she did, but Cosima said she'd fallen down a dissertation rabbit hole and didn't want to leave all her books out in the open to meet Delphine. _Gimme fifteen minutes, and tell me where you are then. I'll come find you._ And another kissy face. 

The library, Delphine had to admit, was impressive on a scale that exceeded all her expectations. It was modern, incorporating ancient ideals of scholarship with contemporary architecture and technology. The sloped, windowed ceiling opened the building to the heavens and dwarfed the patrons and tourists milling around inside. She passed the larger groups of them and headed to the stacks a floor above the entrance, texting Cosima once more before putting her phone on silent. 

Several shelves in, she found herself alone, with no other patrons in visual or audible range. She skimmed the collection of astronomy books until she found a large illustrated volume about the International Space Station, in French. She was halfway through, leaning with all her weight on one leg, when hands slid around her waist. 

“Are we going to space next?” Cosima whispered, then kissed her neck. 

“I think if a Leda were in space, we would know it by now.” She closed the book and put it back on the shelf, then stepped away from Cosima. 

Cosima leaned against the shelves and flashed her teeth. “You know there's, like, no one in this part of the floor, right?”

“Not that I know of.”

“So why are you doing the whole _don't touch me in public_ thing?”

She'd thought it was obvious. “Because we are in public.”

Cosima grabbed her by the front of her jacket and pulled her in for a kiss. It was soft, with no tongue or teeth, and in a moment she let go again. “I am not asking to have sex in the library,” Cosima whispered, “although it would be fucking awesome to fuck you in the Library of Alexandria, not gonna lie. I just...” She gave a dramatic sigh. “I just want to touch you sometimes, and I hate the fact that I can't.”

Delphine agreed completely. She stroked her face. “I know. This isn't forever.”

“Right, I know, I know. Just a couple more... months, maybe.”

“All together, yes.” 

Another patron wandered by then, clutching a reference paper in one hand. He didn't acknowledge them, but he certainly would have noticed if they were making out. 

“Do you want to stay?” Delphine asked. “If you want to work on your dissertation some more, I could be very happy looking around some more. Only if you want, though.”

Cosima shrugged and adjusted her bag. “I got a lot done already. My dad really wants us to go to the planetarium, too. He texted me at 1:14 California time to tell me that, so I feel kinda obligated. And...” She looked around at the books. “...we're kind of in the space section anyways, so it'll be a nice segue.”

“The planetarium?”

“Yeah, the place where you can see, like, a movie of the stars moving across the sky...”

“I know what a planetarium is, yes, thank you. But, why does your father want us to go so badly? He's a ecologist, not an astronomer.”

Cosima led the way out of the stacks and down the stairs. “He is a hobby astronomer. Always has been. Why do think my parents named me _Cosima_?”

“I... I have no idea, actually. I assumed it was because they liked the sound of it.”

“Well, yes. But it's a variant of _Cosmo_. Like _cosmos_.”

“So, if your parents had had a boy, they would have named him _Cosmo_?”

Cosima grimaced. “That is a distinct possibility, yes.” 

They pushed through the doors into the glistening Egyptian midday, and a decades-old memory seeped back into Delphine's consciousness. She turned to Cosima. “I think Cosmo is the patron saint of doctors, too.”

“Are you serious?” Cosima stopped in her tracks and spun around. “Like, medical doctors?”

“Well, in French it's Saint Côme, which used to be Saint Cosme, and I believe that's the same as Cosmo.”

Cosima laughed and bent forward in delight, going so far as to slap her thigh. “That is awesome! See, we're totally meant to be together.”

Inside the planetarium, they bought tickets for “Oasis in Space” and squeezed into the only two adjacent seats they found a few minutes before the show started. As soon as the lights dimmed, Cosima groped around Delphine's lap for her hand, and Delphine could almost hear the tongue-between-the-teeth grin. And she had to admit, holding hands with Cosima, in public, in what was technically the Middle East, and getting away with it, did have a certain thrill. 

Overhead, they watched the cosmos fly by on the domed ceiling while a deep, disembodied voice described the search for water and life on other planets, and a dramatic soundtrack filed in the spaces between sentences. During a louder moment, Cosima leaned over and nuzzled her ear, then took it between her teeth. She released Delphine's hand and reached over to stroke her thigh, but Delphine grabbed her hand again and squeezed it as tightly as possible. 

“There are school children here!” she hissed into Cosima's ear. 

“Nnnn.... I know.” Cosima kissed her ear. “Just couldn't help myself.”

They sat through the whole show, Cosima's left hand safely tucked into Delphine's right, and once the lights came on, Cosima all but pulled her out of her seat. By being a little less than polite, they made it out of the building before the hoards of school children and accompanying adults could clog the exits.

On the way back to the hotel, she watched Cosima bounce as she walked. It was subtle, this extra bouancy in all of her joints, and it included little twists that followed along with Cosima's internal rhythm. It was adorable, and very sexy. A block from the hotel, Cosima turned her head towards Delphine.

“We don't have anything to do for the rest of the day, do we?”

She kept her face neutral. “Oh, there are a few things I might want to do in a little bit.”

“Inside or outside?”

Cosima's little cocked eyebrow almost broke Delphine's neutral face. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how much you can handle.”

“Mmm....” Cosima looked around at the people surrounding them on the street, many of them tourists, and most of them competent in English. “I think that I can handle whatever you wanna throw at me, Dr. Cormier.”

* * *

They got dinner at a restaurant near the hotel, their bodies warm and loose from sex and hot showers. Delphine nearly forgot that she wasn't supposed to hold Cosima's hand, and Cosima noticed. “Just one more month, yeah? Then back to Canada for a minute.”

Delphine nodded. “Unless something comes up.”

Cosima leaned back in her chair and contemplated the table top. “Like we finally find Malika, or something.”

“Like we find her and she has symptoms.”

“Right.”

“And even then, I would go off and cure her, so you can spend that week with your family.”

Cosima clicked her teeth. “Yeah, Alison might get kinda mad if I miss Clone Fest.”

“She most certainly would.”

They were almost finished with their food when Delphine's phone beeped. She looked at it and drew a deep breath. Then she opened the email. 

_Delphine,_

_I'm afraid I'll be very busy during those dates. Perhaps another time._

_Maman_

She stared at the message, reading and re-reading it as though she'd missed something, but she hadn't. It was two sentences, nothing more. She fought the urge to throw her phone across the room. 

“Everything okay?” Cosima's hand was almost on hers before Delphine pulled back. 

“Yes. Euh, my mother isn't going to see us while we're in Paris.”

“Oh. I'm sorry?”

She took a deep breath, and put her phone back in her pocket, then thought better and put it in her purse. “Don't be. We'll probably enjoy ourselves much more this way.”

Cosima watched her, her fork balanced between two fingers. She didn't say anything, but raised her eyebrows and ran her tongue over her teeth. Then she took another bite of falafel and tapped the table with her free hand. 

Delphine couldn't eat anything else. She pushed her plate of _fatteh_ away and focused on her breathing. Her mother _would_ be in Paris during their visit; she was sure of it. When Maman traveled, she let everyone know. No, her mother would be there, meeting with clients and having elegant dinners with friends, and every single item on her agenda was more important than seeing Delphine after she'd been away for four years. 

The waiter came with the bill, which Cosima took care of, and they walked back to the hotel. In the lobby, forty or fifty German-speaking teenagers spread out to occupy the entire space, laughing and flirting with each other. A couple of them stared at them as they pushed their way through the crowd. 

“Beautiful hair!” one boy called to Cosima. She ignored him.

An older boy angled himself in front of them near the elevators. “Hello sexy, what room you are in?” he asked, while his friends laughed. Delphine thought of the knife in her pocket, but Cosima steered her into the elevator, and they left the teenagers behind.

Upstairs in their room, Delphine dropped her purse on her bed, followed by her jacket. They'd fallen into a routine with these separate beds, which Delphine now requested for the sake of security. Cosima took the bed nearest the door, and Delphine the farthest, unless by chance the beds were actually large enough for both of them, as had been the case in Oran. She thought of that room while she removed her boots, of the powder blue duvets and sheets that she'd rumpled up before check out to make both beds look slept in. 

“Hey.” Cosima stood beside her, stroking her hair with her finger tips. 

“Hello.” She gave her her best smile. Cosima deserved that. 

“Do you... wanna talk?”

“About what?”

Cosima chewed on her lip. She'd taken off her jacket and scarf, and her shirt opened up to reveal the cute little hollow between her collarbones. “That, uh, that message from your mom that you got during dinner?”

“Mmm...” She leaned over and rested her face against Cosima's body, bumping her nose against a clavicle. “Do I have to?”

“No. But you seemed pretty upset about it. You still seem upset, and while those assholes downstairs didn't help, I'm pretty sure they're not the reason why.”

“They're not.” She took a deep breath. “It's okay. I'm not surprised, to be honest. I told you my mother and I were never close.”

Cosima slid down onto the bed beside her and supported Delphine's weight in her arms. “Right. But you still wanted to see her, didn't you? I mean, you emailed her asking if she'd be available. Did she say anything about... I mean, about the whole _fiancée_ thing?”

“No. She did not. She said she will not be available, and that is all she said.”

“Okay.” Cosima shifted to better accommodate her weight, and played with her hair. “Does that mean we're not inviting her to the wedding, then?”

The wedding. Despite being the one to propose, Cosima seemed to have no desire to talk about the actual wedding. Until now, perhaps. Delphine pulled herself upright. “Are we wedding planning now?”

“Not unless you want to, but a couple folks back home sure do. Alison wants a guest list.”

Delphine stood up and rolled her eyes. They had just left a war torn country, and they would enter at least two more before the summer. Her left calf was bothering her for reasons unknown. They still had no idea where to find Malika. And Alison Hendrix wanted a fucking guest list for a wedding that didn't even have a tentative date yet. She walked over to the bathroom, but turned to Cosima at the door. 

“Tell her she can put _our_ names on the guest list. See if that makes her happy.”


	5. Chapter 5

_  
The warehouse was packed, a jumble of boxes of all sizes, large ones on top of small ones, stacked at crooked angles or wedged into corners._

_“It's up there,” Dad said. He pointed to a shelf near the ceiling, where the box of inoculations sat halfway on, halfway off. “We'll get it down for you, Kiddo, don't worry.” He clapped her on the back and started climbing a stack of boxes._

_Mom joined him, laughing as she went up. “It's not hard!” she called down._

_Cosima tried for herself, stepping on the exposed part of a box at the bottom of a different stack, but her foot went through the cardboard. There was nothing in it, and when she pushed the other boxes, they were all light as air._

_“Oh, shit... Hey, Mom?” She turned to see her parents teetering on their pillar of boxes, at least three meters above her. Then Dad's foot slipped, and the entire pillar collapsed like a game of Jenga, swallowing her parents in flying, unsupportive cardboard._

__

When she woke, sunlight streamed into the room. Cosima lay on top of the covers, her glasses still on, her phone a few inches from her face. She swiped it on and saw an article about the aid organization her Ethiopia-based sister worked for, and in another tab, an email from her mother ten minutes ago about mechanical trouble they were having with their boat, which was keeping them on land for the time being. 

_But they're dead. They fell from that pile of boxes and they died. Didn't they?_

In the corner of the room, Delphine sat in the hotel armchair, looking at her own phone. Just as Cosima glanced up at her, she muttered, “Ah, putain...”

“What's wrong?” Cosima croaked.

“Oh, hello.” Delphine smiled at her. “Did you sleep well?”

“Um, I think so? What's going on? Why putain?”

“Oh, it's.... It's Ali. He messaged me just now asking if we're still in Alexandria.”

Cosima swung her legs off the bed and rolled her head and arms around some. She took a long drink of water from the bottle on the bedside table. It bought her time to figure out what city they were even in right now, anyway. 

Addis Ababa. That was it. They were in Addis Ababa. 

“Did you tell him we're not even in Egypt anymore?” she asked.

“I'm going to.”

She stood and stretched. “Yeah, if he really wanted to get in your pants, he should've tried harder back in Tripoli.”

Delphine made a face at her, which she answered with an air kiss before going to the bathroom. While she was in there, she thought back to her dream. It made no sense, of course, but in her heart, she was convinced that her parents had died in that jumbled warehouse, and she felt terrible about it. 

Back in the room, Delphine was bent over the spiral notebook for the European and African clones, scribbling away. “Good news, also!”

After a beat in which Delphine didn't elaborate, Cosima prodded, “Yes?”

“We don't have to go to Yemen after all.”

“Oh. I hope that it's because our Yemeni sister is somewhere else?”

“She's in Djibouti, according to a mister, euh... a mister Daniel something, from the refugee tracking group.”

“Djibouti? Swell.” Cosima knew almost nothing about Djibouti, except that it had an American military base where her cousin had been stationed several years ago. If her memory served, Cousin Josh hadn't liked it there, but she couldn't remember why. “I'll ask Alison to find us a room. Where in Djibouti, exactly?”

“The city's also called Djibouti.”

“Djibouti, Djibouti.” Cosima giggled. “Alrighty, then.”

“And, euh, we should be going soon, to catch the flight to Bahir Dar.”

“Oh?” She checked the time – 1:34 pm. “Alright. I feel like it's probably past check-out time, too. We gonna tell Alison we paid for a room we didn't spend the night in?”

“If you want. Don't feel bad, though. Apparently our hotel in Bahir Dar is “super cheap.””

“Great.”

* *

A few hours later, they schlepped their luggage across the patchy, stained carpet of the super cheap hotel's third floor hallway until they reached their room. It was the first African hotel they'd stayed in that had old-fashioned metal keys rather than electronic keycards. 

“How bad could it be?” Cosima whispered, just loud enough for Delphine to hear, but not the Ethiopian couple watching them from the hallway. 

“For one night,” Delphine reminded her as she pushed the door open. “And look, there's a balcony, and a lovely view.” 

The balcony, Cosima suspected, would be the room's main, or only, selling point, since the hotel had no functioning air conditioning, and it was above 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside. She came in and leaned against the door, then made a face when voices in the hallway barked through it. “It's budget, alright.”

From the room next door, a television voice warbled through the wall, and in the other room, the couple they'd seen before talked and laughed. Delphine sat on the bed, which creaked, and took off her sandals. It was late afternoon now, and the heat of the day emanated from pavements and buildings, sitting in the air of their room like a bad smell. Cosima almost missed the cool, light jacket weather of North Africa in February, which reminded her so much of her childhood. 

Barefoot but still covered to respect Ethiopian modesty, Delphine stepped onto their balcony, and Cosima joined her. Visible between lush palm trees and some much more upscale hotels was Lake Tana, Bahir Dar's main tourist draw. The smell of tumeric and coffee drifted up from the nearby buildings. Next door, a white-haired man in a business suit leaned over his own balcony to get a better look at them. 

Delphine waved at him. “Salaam.”

He did not reply, but inclined his head and went on staring. 

“You forget,” Cosima said as she went back into the room, “men aren't supposed to talk to us here.”

With another nod to their neighbor, Delphine joined her, closing the screened door but not the wooden one behind it. “Dawit talks to us.”

“Yeah, he's a little Western, though, isn't he?” Cosima liked Dawit, the guide they'd hired to take them into the countryside in case they couldn't make contact with the Leda here, but she knew that some Ethiopians frowned up Dawit's more European inclinations. 

They had dinner with him that night, and learned that his accommodation was even rougher than their own. “You have your own bathroom,” Dawit reminded them. Cosima bit her tongue to avoid saying that for twenty dollars more, they could probably get air conditioning. Having one's own bathroom was far more critical. At least she hadn't had any of the fun intestinal side-effects she'd heard about from the mefloquine they'd been taking for about a week now to prevent malaria. 

“So,” Dawit said, dabbing his injera in the vegetable wot at the center of their table. “We go to the countryside tomorrow, yes?”

“Euh, perhaps,” Delphine said. “We'll check with the office here tomorrow morning, and then we'll let you know. Regardless, we'll pay you for the entire time, even if we don't go.”

* * 

At night, they lay under light blankets on separate beds, listening to the gentle chatter of their neighbors on the balcony next door. The balcony screen door protected them from mosquitos, and let the night air cool the room to a reasonable temperature. Except for a few lights in the hotel a block away, the darkness was absolute. Cosima lay with her right hand draped across her inner right thigh, trying not to bounce too much, or to think too much about how Delphine's stomach felt under her mouth.

“Delphine?” she whispered.

“Oui?”

She paused, listening to the laughter next door. Then she exhaled and said, very softly, “I'm really horny.”

Delphine's laughter came as a snort. “Is that a problem?” she whispered back.

“Well, it's kind of keeping me awake.” 

“Aww, pauvre petit chiot.” 

Unsympathetic bitch. Fuck it. Cosima slid out of her bed with a creak, and then crawled under Delphine's blanket with her. Delphine's bed squeaked and whined as they adjusted themselves, and Delphine whispered, “Shh...” 

“I'll be super quiet,” Cosima murmured into her ear. “I promise.”

But when she slid one bare leg over Delphine's hip and felt the pressure on her clit, the damn bed creaked again, and yet again when she scooted up a little to get a better angle. This time, Delphine shook her head. “Non,” she said. “Not now.”

Cosima sighed and went limp in her arms, stilling her movements. In the silence that followed, she listened to Delphine's heart pounding against her breast and smelled her sweat mingled with her body wash, and thought of all the queer Ethiopians who put up with this every single day. 

After a while, music drifted in from outside, and the man in the room next door laughed at something. Delphine stroked Cosima's arms and back. “Are you still awake?” she asked.

“Mhm.”

She pushed against Cosima's hip. “Lay on your back. Slowly.”

Cosima did so, yielding only the softest of complaints from the bed. As she moved, so did Delphine, rolling onto her side to face her poor frustrated fiancée in the darkness. She kissed Cosima's earlobe, then her cheek, her temple, the corner of her mouth. “Stay still,” she said, and Cosima nodded. 

The music outside continued, soft enough that they still heard the yowls of feral cats but loud enough to cover subtle shifts under the blanket as Delphine slid her hand over Cosima's stomach and Cosima spread her thighs, and moaned softly. 

It wasn't how either of them wanted to do it. Cosima would have much preferred that strap-on Delphine had gotten for Christmas, or, hell, even just a place where they could both scream as loudly as they wanted to when they came. That was a little ways away, though. Until then, they would make do.

Delphine started slowly, gently stroking the fabric between Cosima's legs, and she had to fight not to squirm. “Don't tease me,” she hissed. “Not this time.”

She felt Delphine smile against her cheek, but she kept up her agonizing pace until Cosima grabbed her hand and shoved it inside her underwear. She could have just done it herself, of course, and she'd considered it, but there was something so much sweeter about Delphine's fingers getting her off, and Delphine certainly know how to do it. 

“Nnnnn....” 

Delphine pressed her lips to Cosima's ear. “Can you be silent?”

Cosima shoved the blanket into her mouth, but it was fuzzy and tasted like mothballs, and she spit it out again. Delphine kept her hand still, resting on Cosima's pelvic bone, until Cosima nodded, her hand clenched over her mouth. 

From this angle and with Cosima's underwear constraining her movements, Delphine couldn't reach far enough to go inside Cosima, but that was okay. Cosima didn't need a great orgasm, she just needed _an_ orgasm, and Delphine could give her that. She circled the top of her clit with increasing pressure until Cosima thought she would spill herself all over the bed, and then she used two fingers, one on each side, in rapid elliptical motions. 

In minutes, stars burst in Cosima's eyes and her body burst open. With a tremendous force of will, she griped the sides of her mouth to keep quiet and the electric currents sang along all of her nerve endings.

Once she'd returned to Earth, she whispered, “That was nice. Thanks.”

Delphine kissed her face again. “You're very welcome.”

As they drifted off to sleep in each other's arms, the music and the voices outside went on, none the wiser.

* *

_She was running, running as hard as she could, but her legs wouldn't move. They froze up like setting concrete, until she fell forward, palms striking the pavement._

_And behind her, they came, spilling from behind buildings – Westmoreland, Leekie, Martin, Dr. Nealon, Ferdinand hidden in the shadows, even Susan Duncan. They flew over the ground as a congealed mass, morphing and blending together, teeth and weapons flashing. And Cosima was frozen. Even her screams didn't come. She opened her mouth and pushed her lungs, but no air came out._

Delphine's phone rang, and Cosima jolted awake. Beneath her, Delphine shifted, and the bed groaned. 

“Âllo?”

The voice on the other end sounded like the teacher in the old Charlie Brown cartoons, but Cosima was too frightened to care. She looked around the room. It was early morning, and mist rose from the grass outside their balcony. The air smelled of freshly cut grass. Westmoreland, Leekie, Ferdinand, Susan Duncan... they were all dead, and had been for some time. But they didn't feel dead now. 

She got up and used the bathroom. While she washed her hands, she stared at herself in the mirror, then slapped her cheeks a few times. For fuck's sake, Helena's babies had their first birthday yesterday, which meant it was a whole year since Westmoreland died and Neolution collapsed for good. Why the hell was she dreaming about this shit now?

“More good news,” Delphine said when she emerged, “I hope. The coordinator says that Elisa is in town today. Apparently he recalled her to the office after my emails about out health concerns for her.”

Cosima changed her underwear and put on the long flowy skirt she'd bought specifically for Ethiopia. “That's good. We don't have to go out in the field to find her then.”

Delphine was already halfway dressed. “Presumably not. I'm going to the office now.”

“I guess I'll stay here, then.”

Delphine gave her that apologetic look she always got at these times, kissed her, and left. 

Cosima spent thirty minutes flipping through the TV channels before giving up. She understood none of the words, but half seemed to be religious programming, and the other half was ragingly heteronormative. 

She wanted to call her parents, or her sisters, but it was 2 am in Toronto and 11 pm yesterday in San Francisco. Her parents had said they were staying up later these days, though...

Her mother picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Hey, Mom, it's me.”

“Oh, my goodness, sweetie! What time is it over there? Where are you right now?”

Cosima pulled the desk chair out onto the balcony and leaned back. “We are in Bahir Dar. It's north of Addis Ababa.”

“Addis...?”

“Ethiopia, Mom.”

Sally let out a heavy breath, and then another one. “You're making me worry, sweetheart.”

“Don't. Don't worry. We're totally fine. Lots of good food, and it looks like we can take care of what we need to today or tomorrow.”

“And then where? What's next?”

“Um, back to Addis, and then Djibouti.”

There was a pause. “Aren't there pirates in Djibouti?”

Oh, Lord. “Well, I mean, technically, I think, yes. But they're more of a problem for ships, I think, and we're not going out to sea.” 

“Okay. I just worry about you, you know, and some of our sailing friends have told us stories.”

“I know. I'm sure they have.”

“Oh, God, and I have enough to worry about here with your father, so please don't give me anything else.”

“I'll try not to. What's going on with Dad?”

“Oh, you know, his heart.”

“Has something changed?”

“Well, he had a minor heart attack the other day.”

Cosima tipped forward in the chair, and the legs hit the balcony with a clank. “A minor heart attack?!”

Sally sighed. “It was minor. He was only at the hospital for a day, but...”

The guests in the room next door heard her shout and stepped onto their own balconies to watch her. Cosima didn't care. They could watch and listen all they wanted to.

“When was this?”

“Two days ago. The day after his birthday. Oh, and he says thank you for the lovely little spice collection you sent him from Morocco.”

“Mom... he had a heart attack? Were you gonna tell me?”

In the background, a car alarm sounded, and Sally swore under her breath. “Of course I was going to tell you. I didn't call you because it happened when you were probably sleeping, and I know you have a lot to deal with anyway, and it wasn't a big deal. He's on aspirin and a few other prescriptions.”

Cosima put her phone on speaker and switched to her email window. Scrolling back a few days, she found the last email from her mother, from two days earlier. “Mom,” she said, “the last email you sent me, you said you were having mechanical problems with the boat. You said nothing about Dad having a heart attack.”

“I sent you that before it happened. The mechanic is charging us an arm and a leg, by the way. It's ridiculous.”

“Do you really think Dad should be going out on the water after this?”

There was a pause. “We're not sure yet,” she said.

And Cosima knew that meant that no, her father shouldn't be going out again. But her parents were seafaring people. They lived on the water, and the idea that Gene could no longer go out to sea would be a difficult swallow, to say the least. 

“Just... keep me posted okay?” she said. 

“I will, sweetie.” Sally took a deep breath and released it, and Cosima hear the sound of liquid going into a glass. Probably her mother's nightly apple juice and Metamucil cocktail. “So what's new with you two?”

Cosima gave her a brief overview of their past few days, and their plans for the upcoming week. She told them to look out for another package, from Alexandria this time – the second half of her father's birthday gift. Next door, the other guests got bored and went back inside. Sally drank her juice on the phone, swallowing audibly. 

“Oh, I sent Helena's twins a set of Sesame Streets books for their birthday,” Sally said. “I wanted to find some children's books in Ukrainian, but I just couldn't find any. You'd think, in a city like San Francisco, there'd be a specialty store or something!”

“Gotta go online for that, Mom. Plus, last I heard, Helena's been doing her own translations for a lot of the books she read them.”

“Oh how nice! Maybe she could make some money doing that!”

“Maybe.”

When they hung up, it was midnight in San Francisco and 11:00 am in Bahir Dar. Cosima tilted her chair back again and stared into the steamy cityscape with the lake just beyond. 

* *

Two nights later, back at the air conditioned Ramada Inn in Addis Ababa, Cosima Skyped with Sarah while Delphine showered. It was a teacher work-and-conference day for schools in Toronto, so the girls were home and Sarah had her hair up in fake-Cosima dreadlocks.

“Sha-booty?” Sarah repeated, then sniggered. “Is that actually a country?”

From off screen, Kira's voiced piped in. “It's JA-booty, Mom! And it's spelled with a D!”

“Oh, well, excuuuuse me!”

“It's a pretty small country,” Cosima told her. “Lots of people haven't heard of it.”

“Yeah, well, you know me. International geography's not exactly my strong suit. Ethiopia I've heard of, of course. Everyone knows that. You getting enough to eat there, by the way?”

Cosima thought of the many helpings of vegetable wat they'd eaten since arriving. “Yes. We are getting plenty to eat, don't worry. All vegetarian, too.”

“Oh? You going veg again?”

“Not intentionally. It's Lent, so no one's eating meat in Ethiopia right now. Except the, like, five people who aren't super Christian.”

Charlotte leaned into view then, with a stick of string cheese in one hand. “Wikipedia said Ethiopia has a lot of Muslims, though, too.”

Cosima laughed and rubbed her forehead. These kids were getting awfully smart awfully fast. “Maybe you guys should, like, hire yourselves out as info guides for hapless Canadians travelling to Ethiopia in the future. What else do you know about Djibouti?”

“It's small.”

Sarah scoffed. “Yeah, Cos just told us that. Go look it up. Both of you. Come back with a five minute presentation.”

Cosima waited until the girls' voices died down to ask Sarah, “Did you send them away for a reason?”

“It's just easier to talk to you when they're not fighting for your attention and showing off.”

“It's cool they know so much, though. You gotta admit, most North Americans don't know half of that shit.”

“And I am part of that group, for sure.” She sighed and twirled the fake glasses around some more. Peering around to make sure the girls weren't close by, she said, “Charlotte's been telling people that she's a clone.”

Whatever she'd thought Sarah was going to say, that wasn't it. “Oh.”

“Yeah, her teacher brought it up this morning, saying she's been telling her classmates that, and she wondered what that was about.”

“And what did you say?”

Sarah sighed and rolled her head back. “Cos, I didn't know what to say. And then, Charlotte turns to me and says, 'You're a clone, too.' Like, thanks for putting me on the bloody spot like that, Charlotte. I just told her we'd talk about it when we got home, and then we changed the subject to how she's doing with this new leg brace we've gotten her.”

Cosima held her hands to her forehead. Behind her, Delphine emerged from the bathroom with a cloud of steam. “And,” she asked Sarah, “have you talked about it since you got home?”

“Course not. After that, I had a meeting with Kira's teacher, who thinks these dreads are hilarious, by the way. Apparently, Kira's been getting a little too big for her britches, trying to lead the class and arguing with the teacher.”

“She arguing with the teacher?” Cosima smiled, even though she'd much rather discuss Charlotte's newly-asserted clone identity. 

“He said it's not a big deal, but she sometimes kind of steers the class away from the course he'd set for it.” She raised her hands in a 'what can you do' gesture. 

“You've got some very outgoing kids on your hands, there, Sestra.”

“Seriously. Some very stubborn kids, as well. She says you've been worried, too.”

“Wait. Kira says I've been worried?” 

“Yeah, you know how she is. She said you've been more anxious recently.”

She didn't know what to say to that. Having her emotions continuously linked with a prepubescent girl was weird enough that she tried not to think too much about it. Delphine was listening, too. She'd stopped brushing her hair on the bed and was leaning closer. 

“Well,” Cosima said, “my dad had a minor heart attack a few days ago. That could be what she's feeling, the, um, the worry that I have about that.”

“Oh, shit, Cos. Is he okay?”

“Mom says he's fine, just a little shaken up.”

“I can imagine. Do they need anything? Any.... um, I dunno, anything?”

“No, they're good. They've got pretty good health insurance, thankfully, and plenty of savings for everything else. They might have to get an apartment on land or something, though, and I think they're in denial about that.”

That part didn't concern Sarah, who just nodded along. “Well, I hope he's okay. You're right, that's probably what Kira was feeling. I'd be worried, too. If, you know, if I'd ever had a dad in the first place.” She grinned that cheeky Leda grin, and Cosima had to laugh.

She wanted to talk more about Charlotte outing them as clones, but Delphine rubbed her shoulders. “Hello, Sarah.”

“Hey, Delphine. Taking good care of my sister, I hope?”

Cosima pretended to swat her. “She is taking very good care of me, don't worry.”

“However,” Delphine said, “we really need to be going to sleep soon. We have an early flight tomorrow.”

They all said goodbye and sent best wishes to other family members, and Cosima logged off. 

* *

__

_She waited at the bottom of the tower, looking from the illuminated room out into the darkness. Buses and cars zipped past, and groups of people in bright pink or white clothing walked by, laughing with each other. They weren't for her. They didn't even know she was there._

_Outside, the shadows hid more shadows, and in those shadows was safety, and excitement._

_She was hungry and she had time, so she went to the cafe nearby, but just as she arrived, a smooth pink Cadillac pulled up, driven by a man with a blob fish face, and she hid again, until he was gone. Then she entered the cafe, where other night people like herself hid, smoking in the shadows and eating overcooked egg patties near a glowing jukebox. The heat was stifling, and greasy smoke settled over everything, coating her sinuses and the linings of her throat._

_Back at the tower, Delphine was there in a tank top and a short skirt, with a scruffy young man in tight jeans. She didn't want him to be there, but Delphine did, so she played it off, laughing and joking. They wanted to see the top of the tower, and Cosima loved it at the top, so up they went, spiraling around, with Cosima trying to stand as close to Delphine as possible. She wanted to hold her hand and keep her here to herself. Maybe she could arrange that._

_Then they'd reached the top, where the ceiling was so low she had to crawl, and Cosima squeezed herself into the final space. The window was eye-level, and more cars had parked below. She turned to tell Delphine and the boy, but they were gone. The hallway yawned out into darkness and shadow._

_When she looked out the window again, she saw them. Delphine got into the boy's car, talking and laughing with him, and they drove away._

_And then the tower crumbled away beneath her, and she fell._

__

For a second, she floundered between wakefulness and sleep, while a tinny little sound forced itself on her brain. 

_It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine!_

“Oh, shit.” She flapped around. It was somewhere, but not under her pillow, not on the bed beside her, and not on the table to her right. There was no table to her left. The song continued it's upbeat tempo.

_Six o'clock, TV hour, don't get caught in foreign tower  
Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn_

A light blinked on. “It's on the desk,” Delphine muttered. “You put it there last night.”

“Right. Fuck. Shit.”

_Light a candle, light a motive, step down, step down_

She stumbled out of bed, tripped over a shoe, and knocked a bottle of water from the desk before silencing REM's stream of consciousness lyrics. It was 3:31 in the morning. 

Behind her, Delphine sat up and stretched. “Maybe a different song next time?”

Cosima caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and cringed. “I mean, the point was get my ass out of bed, wasn't it? Looks like it worked.”

They departed Addis Ababa at 5:30, in the Cloud Nine section of an Ethiopian Airlines flight thanks to the gobs of travel benefits they'd accumulated with their credit card company. As sleepy as Cosima was, though, and for such a short flight, they might as well have flown economy class. 

“Are you alright?” Delphine asked after the flight attendant gave them coffee and complimentary fruit and pastries. 

“We've been up and moving for over two hours, and the sun's not up yet. What do you think?”

“I think this was the only flight we could get on short notice. Also, I think this pineapple is excellent.”

Cosima grunted. The ashes of her dream were still floating around in her brain, and she resented Delphine for leaving her even though none of it was real. At least the seats in the Cloud Nine section were two to a row rather than three. She couldn't vouch for her own behavior if some guy in the third seat tried flirting with her fiancée this morning. 

“You look more tired than usual, though,” Delphine remarked. “Is anything else wrong?”

She scowled and crunched herself against the window, looking down at the expanse of shadowy mountains below. There were national parks and wildlife refuges in this part of the country that they hadn't seen, that hadn't even been on the agenda in the event that their patient wasn't in the city. One day, though, maybe they could see them. For an evolutionary biologist, the Great Rift Valley was like sacred ground.

Delphine's hand was warm on hers. “Hey.”

“It's nothing.”

She closed her eyes but she could practically feel the air move as Delphine arched her eyebrows. “Oh?” Delphine said.

“I just haven't been sleeping well. It happens sometimes.”

“Not usually.”

Cosima had to concede that Delphine might know more about her sleeping patterns than she did at this point. “Well, it'll pass soon enough, I'm sure. It's probably just stress from having to, like, lie all the time, or whatever.”

“Maybe.” The flight attendant passed, and Delphine released her hand, then took it again a moment later, moving it to between their bodies so it was less obvious. “Is your stomach feeling okay?”

“Delphine, you would know if my stomach weren't feeling well. It's fine.”

“That's good. Have you had any bad dreams?”

She turned to look at her. Delphine's face seemed neutral but curious, her eyebrows still slightly elevated. Cosima shifted in her seat. “Yes, actually.”

“Often?”

“Like, every time I fall asleep.” Now that she'd said it, she had to say the rest of it, too. “Last night you left me for this guy, except, like, I don't think you were ever really with me to begin with, and then I was high up in this building that collapsed just before I woke up. And the other night, I dreamed that my parents died, and this other time all the shitty people from Neolution were after me and I couldn't get away, and... why are you smiling and nodding?”

“The first thing we'll do when we land is go to a pharmacy and change your malaria preventative.”

“What?”

“Mefloquine is great for preventing malaria, but it has a reputation for causing nightmares in some people. It also causes intestinal upsets; that's why I asked about that.”

Her muscles relaxed into the seat. “So I'm not going crazy.”

“No. Although, the things you mentioned, that you're dreaming about, might be things you're actually worried about. Are you worried that I'll leave you?”

“Not, like, actively, no.”

“Passively?”

“Look, passively I'm worried about just about everything. I'm worried about bees going extinct, and the lack of intellectual rigor in online news reporting, and all kinds of other stuff.”

Delphine's eyes and lips narrowed. She opened her mouth, then thought better of it and closed it again. “Alright. But, I have no intention of leaving you, for 'some guy' or anyone else.”

“I know.”

“Have some coffee and some food, though. We have a lot to do once we land.”

* * 

The dust in Djibouti was insane. Cosima wrapped the thin shawl around her face as the wind whipped the dust around, and she wished she could guard her eyes as well. Beside her, Delphine fared no better. Finally, they ducked into a small cafe where other women sat. They'd learned early on in Africa not to enter places with only men in them. Cosima ordered tea for them both in Arabic, earning her an arched eyebrow from the owner, and then they slumped into wooden chairs. 

A woman sitting near them smiled, leaned towards them, and said something in Arabic. She was lighter skinned than most local women, appearing Middle-Eastern or North African rather than Somali or Afar like most of the locals.

“Sorry,” Cosima said with a smile. “I don't actually speak much Arabic.” They had tried to get a translator, but the agency they were referred to had gone belly-up recently, and they'd have to wait several days for one from a different organization. 

The woman cocked her head, so Delphine tried the same sentence in French, and the woman's face lit up. “Ah! Français! Je m'appelle Kadra!”

Kadra's French, it turned out, was about as good as Cosima's. She knew words, and understood most of what Delphine said if she spoke slowly, but she struggled to put sentences together, and she made some errors that Cosima had learned to avoid. Still, Delphine tried her best. She explained that they were looking for Cosima's sister, Nooran, who looked just like her but came from Yemen and was said to be living here now. 

“Une réfugiée?” Kadra asked. 

“Oui.”

Kadra looked at Cosima, who was still brushing dust from her face and sleeves. Then she held up a finger for them to wait a moment, and left the building. 

“Réfugiée is refugee?” Cosima said. “That's easy. And unfortunately super useful.”

Five minutes later, Kadra returned with another woman. The other woman did not introduce herself, but looked at Cosima from several angles, then nodded. She spoke to Kadra in what might have been Somali, and Kadra translated into halting, uncertain French. 

“La soeur... appartement... 12 kilomètres... non, 2 kilomètres est.” Then she pointed east.

Cosima wrote that down in her notebook: _Nooran 2 kilometers east, apartment_ , and pulled out their map of the city of Djibouti. Kadra helped her find their current location and the place Nooran supposedly was. Then the other woman shook her head and clicked her tongue. With a wave of her hand she said a word that started with sharp guttural sound, and made a face like someone had farted. 

Seeing both Delphine and Cosima staring blankly, Kadra snapped her fingers and tapped her foot, going “ehm, ehm” until finally she came up with “tuberculose!”

“Tuberculose?” Delphine repeated. “Nooran a la tuberculose?”

That sounded an awful lot like a cognate, but Cosima still asked Delphine, “Did she say tuberculosis?”

Kadra nodded. “Non vous allez. Tuberculose. Mal.” She drew a finger across her throat just in case her point wasn't clear enough. 

There was some more discussion, with Delphine repeating the words “comment” and “pourquoi,” asking how and why they knew that, and Kadra could only ask her friend, who just repeated the same word she'd said earlier, shook her head, and walked away. A few minutes later, after wishing them “bonne chance,” Kadra left as well. 

“If they say she has tuberculosis,” Cosima said....

“Then she's probably coughing up blood,” Delphine finished. “She might, of course, actually have TB, but the diagnostics for refugees are never the best.” 

* 

Nooran's apartment was in a jumble of sand-colored buildings, seemingly stacked like boxes in a moving truck. It wasn't hard to find the right neighborhood; the language switched from one block to the next, from unfamiliar Somali to familiar but unintelligible Arabic, and the skin tone of the population lightened up a few shades. Not long after they noticed the difference, a woman with a baby on her hip shouted to them. She pointed at Cosima and gestured away. A couple other people nearby noticed, and moved to put more distance between themselves and Cosima. 

It would have been good, Cosima reflected, to learn the phrase “I'm not _____.” She held up her hands and shook her head, wracking her brain for the Arabic word for “not.” “No, um... _lays_ Nooran. Nooran _'ukht_.”

She'd learned _'ukht_ early in their time in North Africa, as the Arabic word for sister, but she'd never tried to pronounce it for an actual Arabic speaker. 

It worked though, because it made the woman with the child relax. She said some more in Arabic, but when it became clear that _'ukht_ and _lays_ were Cosima's only words, she gestured from them to follow her. They did so, skirting carts of produce and crates full of T-shirts and cell phones, as well as people who stopped everything to stare at the Western women in their neighborhood. 

They found Nooran's apartment near the end of the block, down an alleyway where a dog scratched himself nonstop. Their guide pointed up a narrow stairway and counted to three, indicating they should go up three levels. Then she left. 

Cosima looked up the stairway that led to Nooran's apartment. From the ground, Nooran's door was hidden, so if Delphine went up alone, Cosima wouldn't even see her enter the unit. Her dream of the spiral tower came back to her and she shook her head. “I'll go up with you,” she said. 

Delphine nodded, but said, “It's not the best idea.”

“Listen, a woman coughing up blood in a shabby apartment building is not the best idea, and I don't feel good about you going up there by yourself. Chances are, she doesn't speak much English, and we can pretend to be just as surprised as she is about how similar we look. Yeah?”

The door at the third floor was opened by a boy around age 10, wearing a Superman T-shirt that was a few sizes too small for him. Delphine smiled at him. “Assalam alaikum,” she said. When he kept staring at her, she tried again with the more casual “Marhabaan.” And then, “Nooran Rageh?”

The boy twisted around to shout back into the apartment. A small voice replied, and he gestured for Cosima and Delphine to enter. 

Inside the apartment, four other children were engaged in various play or work activities. A girl about Charlotte's age sewed a pair of pants. Another boy had a workbook open in front of him, and a pair of little girls played with some naked Barbie dolls. The children looked at them both with interest, but clearly Delphine fascinated them the most. The only furniture was a tilted plastic table, two plastic chairs, and a stool with a hot pot on it. There were three ragged cardboard boxes in one corner, as well.

The first boy went to the back of the apartment and entered one of two rooms. A moment later, the boy beckoned them again, and the went into a small bedroom with two mattresses on the floor and magazines scattered all over. Sitting on the larger mattress with her back against the wall was Nooran, who probably weighed thirty pounds less than Cosima. 

Like the children, her eyes were drawn more to Delphine, who uncovered her hair now that she knew no men were around to get upset about it. “Marhabaan,” she said to Nooran. 

Nooran answered in Arabic, but her speech was interrupted by a bout of deep, bloody coughs that bent her double on the mattress, which, as Cosima looked closer, was stained with blood. Delphine stepped closer and crouched beside her, her medical bag with its prominent sewn-on red cross patch between them. She introduced herself in halting Arabic and used hand gestures to indicate she wanted to examine Nooran, who nodded.

While Delphine took Nooran's temperature and listened to her chest, the boy's attention was finally drawn to Cosima's face, and the children from the other room gathered around the doorway to see what was happening. Cosima tried hiding her face with her hand or her headscarf, but the boy pointed to her and said something to the older girl, who peered in for a closer look. 

It was the younger boy, the one with the tattered workbook, who approached her directly. He tugged on Cosima's sleeve, then pointed to Nooran, who was looking at Delphine's Arabic-labelled diagram of the female body. “ _'ukht_ ,” he said, and all the children giggled. 

Cosima smiled at him. “Something like that, yes.”

The English words broke the dam of shyness in the other children. The little girls giggled uncontrollably, and the older boy, the one who'd opened the door, beckoned her to join him back in the main room. In one of the cardboard boxes, he rummaged around until he found a paperback book, which he extended to her. “English?” he asked, and she nodded.

The book was _Treasure Island_ by Robert Louis Stevenson – possibly the last book Cosima would expect to find in the possession of a Yemeni refugee family living in Djibouti. Something bumped into her legs then. One of the little girls, who seemed larger than the other, now that Cosima looked closely, had pushed a plastic chair into her legs, and wanted her to sit in it. “Oh, thank you,” was all Cosima could manage. “Shukraan.”

“You?” the older boy asked. “You read?”

“I can read, yes,” she replied, grinning. “And you can speak English. What's your name?”

“Uh...” he fidgeted with his pants while the others clustered around. The oldest girl took the other chair and picked up her sewing like she was supposed to be working on it, but her attention was entirely on Cosima. 

“Okay.” Cosima touched her chest, then pointed to him. “Cosima. I am Cosima. What's your name?” 

“Oh!” In his excitement he hopped on his toes. “Nabil! Me!”

“Nabil. Nice to meet you.” They shook hands, and the other children were introduced in turn – Fatima was the oldest, Mohammed was in the middle, and the little girls were Hana and Soraya. The little girls in particular delighted in repeating “Cosima! Cosima!” over and over and running up to touch her sleeve or her nose ring, then running away again. 

Then Nabil tapped the book in Cosima's hands again. “Read.”

“I... okay.” 

She craned her neck to see into the hallway, and she saw the open door, and heard Delphine's murmured voice, but couldn't see anything. She opened the book. The chapters, she saw, were illustrated like the cover, with pictures of 17th century pirates hoisting flags, talking to parrots, and opening chests of gold. No wonder the children were interested.

“Chapter one,” she began. “The Old Sea-dog at the “Admiral Benbow.” Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey...” 

She had to stop there because the children were laughing so much. Even Fatima, the oldest, held a hand to her mouth to stop laughing too loudly, and Hana rolled around on the floor cackling. She could say anything, Cosima realized, and they would react the same way. It could just as well have been HP Lovecraft or Stephen King or _50 Shades of Gray_ in her hands. 

Still, of the fourteen words she'd read so far, half of them did sound pretty ridiculous. She went on, affecting something resembling Rachel Duncan's English accent.

“... and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island...” 

With that, she showed them all the cover, and pointed to the title, and all but Fatima leaned in like they'd never seen it before.

She continued, carefully enunciating the words that no one used in America anymore, like _tarry_ and _hand-barrow_ , and the children's laughter settled into happy, rapt attention. She sang the song about fifteen men on the dead man's chest, and soon the youngest were all singing “yo-ho-ho” and bouncing the way Cosima had. 

Then Soraya, the littlest girl, crawled up into Cosima's lap. “Oh shi....” Cosima said. “Hi there.”

Soraya sat facing her, one hand in her mouth and her other one prodding Cosima's face. So much for not looking too familiar. Soraya plucked at her nose ring.

“Read!” Nabil said. He sat on the floor now with Hana on his lap, and Mohammed sat upside down, his legs flat against the wall at a 90 degree angle from the rest of his body.

She went on, changing the voices as best she could for the old man and the narrator's father. Occasionally, Nabil repeated words that he seemed to know, like “bad” and “man.” By the time she got to page three, Cosima's mouth was dry and Soraya limp against her chest, sucking on the collar of Cosima's shirt. Cosima looked up to see how close her shoulder bag was, and found Delphine, leaning against the hallway wall and watching her with a big, sweet smile.

“All finished?” Cosima asked.

“Yes. I'll tell you more later. But, please, continue reading if you want to.”

“Only if you give me some water. Actually, though, my leg's kind of falling asleep.”

Delphine handed her the water and smiled at the attendant children. Nabil pointed to her and said, “doctor,” and she nodded. 

The older children, at least, seemed to understand that Cosima needed to leave now, especially when Nooran shuffled out of the bedroom and spoke to them in Arabic . Hana and Soraya, however, clung to Cosima, Hana with one hand and Soraya with all four limbs and the side of her face. Delphine smiled and cooed at them in French, which meant as much to them as it would have in English. Nooran was less gentle. She took Soraya by the upper arms and yanked on her until she released Cosima with a wail. Hana she brushed off with her foot. 

Cosima dug around in her bag for something to give them, but Nooran seemed to want them gone, and she didn't have enough of anything good for all of them. Two cough drops, a few pocket tissues, and a single tampon did not make for good gifts. She said goodbye to all of them, and went out with Delphine into the dusty, 85 degree Djiboutian day.

They didn't talk to each other until they got back to the hotel. The air was dust-free there, and quieter than on the streets. Even so, they spent the entire elevator just looking at each other. Finally, as they opened their door, Delphine said, “You were adorable.”

“It seems I was also hilarious. People don't laugh that much when I'm _trying_ to be funny.”

“They look like good kids.”

Cosima agreed. “They can't be hers, though. We would've heard about it if another fertile clone were running around.”

“No, they're not. If I understood her correctly, they're her sister's children. Her sister died before they left Yemen, in a rocket strike, I believe. Nooran only speaks Arabic, but she drew me some pictures to get her point across.”

“Oh, shit. Poor kids.” Cosima shed her head covering, long-sleeved blouse, and shoes, and sat on the edge of the bed. Delphine followed suit.

“She wants us to take them with us.”

Cosima paused in taking off her socks. “She does what now?”

“I gave her the first treatment, after a lot of gesturing and pointing to pictures, and then she grabbed my arm and told me about the children. She used my dictionary and told me to take them. “Take children Canada,” she said.”

“And, did you tell her that we really can't just do that?”

“I tried.”

“You tried. Delphine, you know that there is only _do or do not_ , there is no _try_! Did you tell her or not?”

“I told her, but I don't know if she understood.”

“Oh, for fuck's sake.” 

Delphine sat on the bed beside her. “We'll talk to her again soon.”

“Oh, will we?”

“Of course. Her disease is relatively advanced, it seems, so she'll need another dose, and she ran out of patience with me today. I need a translator to explain how she can administer the doses herself. I've already emailed a few more translation services here. I'm sure if we pay enough, we can get someone on short notice.”

“Let's hope so.”

“There are contractors working for the military base. Some of them are bound to be interested in a little extra money.”

“Yeah, just make sure they're qualified. Don't forget our adventures with Ruben back in Paraguay.”

Delphine laughed and wrapped her arms around Cosima. “I will never forget poor confused Ruben, don't worry.” She kissed Cosima's ear and made face.

“I know, I need a shower. And so do you.”

“Are you saying that I smell bad?”

“Just a little bit.” She gave Delphine a quick peck on the lips. “Come on. The shower looks pretty big. We can do all kinds of things in there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to FrenchClone for checking the French that needed to be checked!
> 
> It should also be noted that some of Kadra's French is intentionally poor. Because none of us get our second (or third) languages right all the time.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little serious, a little fun

Their hotel in Muscat overlooked the Gulf of Oman and advertised a variety of concierge services as well as tennis courts and indoor and outdoor pools. The lobby featured a bronze statue of a mounted huntsman with a falcon on his arm, a massive chandelier, and several live palm trees. Cosima let out a low whistle and looked around. 

“So this is what five stars looks like.”

They checked in at one of the service stations on the other side of the statue. At the next station over, a tanned young American couple felt each other up while the clerk got them their keys. 

“It's our honeymoon!” the woman said when she saw Delphine watching.

“Congratulations,” Delphine said, managing a small smile to mask her actual discomfort. Jérôme used to touch her that way, especially in public, especially in places like this. She hadn't been able to touch Cosima like that, publicly, for more than a month.

A few feet away from her, Cosima had a similar expression, but she wasn't looking at the couple any more. She was looking around the building, at the pool visible beyond the dining tables and the East African waiter in a crisp white shirt offering a tray of cocktails to a table of white men in linen suits. 

“Is it okay?” Delphine asked.

“Huh? Yeah. Yeah, it's great.” 

She didn't push it. Not while the newly weds were gushing about the pools and the five different hotel restaurants (“One of them's on the roof!” the woman exclaimed.) And anyway, she had a pretty good idea of what Cosima was thinking without having to ask for it.

Twenty-four hours ago, they'd been in Nooran's apartment in Djibouti, with a well-paid translator named Nawal, through whom Delphine told Nooran how to treat herself if she wanted to, or what to tell a doctor about how to treat her in the future. They'd left Nooran their contact cards, and Cosima drew pictures with the children, using brand new art supplies they'd gotten for them. They also gave the family a new water purifier, an Arabic-English dictionary, an Arabic-English picture dictionary, and 100,000 Djibutian francs – the equivalent of about $560. 

“I don't give a shit if Alison complains,” Cosima told her after she took the cash from the ATM at their hotel in Djibouti. “I take care of my sisters, and their families.”

Alison hadn't complained. Alison didn't even know yet, and once she saw the figure on their bank statement, Delphine planned to explain it away as “extra necessary expenses.” 

And still, Nooran wanted them to take the children with them back to Canada. 

“They will have a better future with you,” Nawal translated. “School, and doctors, and jobs. They will be safe there.”

“But we're not going straight back,” Delphine said. “We're going to many other countries first.”

There was the exchange of information, and Nawal translated, “Then you should come back when you're finished, and take them then.”

And now Cosima and Delphine stood in a hotel worth more than money than Nooran would probably ever have, and the cost of their stay here was well over the $560 they'd given her. 

“Hey,” she told Cosima, “we're not finished. This is just a break.”

Cosima smiled at that. “A work break.”

“Okay, there will be some work, but we need to relax and catch up with ourselves. And it's your birthday tomorrow.”

Cosima smiled again, but tilted her head like she was skeptical. “Is that why we're in, like, the highest-class place in Muscat?”

“Yes.” Seeing Cosima gearing up for some objections, she held up a hand. “And it was not only my idea. Your sisters also wanted you to have something nice, so our budget expanded a little bit to put us here for a few days.”

“That's so generous of them.” 

Delphine snorted. “Come on. We've checked in. We're committed now. Let's go upstairs, yeah?”

“Yup. Allons-y.”

* *

The room was as spacious as she'd expected, with two queen-sized beds and a jacuzzi in the bathroom. They dropped all of their luggage on one bed, and Cosima flopped face down on the other one. “What time's your clone appointment?”

Several months ago, early in their travels, Cosima'd tried to form a portmanteau of “clone appointment,” but “clappointment” never, ever sounded good, so she dropped it. Thankfully.

“9 am tomorrow. She's wealthy. Her husband owns the national football league.”

“So she might bitch your ear off about something or other.”

“Or her husband might.”

Cosima rolled onto her back, arms up over her head. The little furrow between her eyebrows had only deepened since getting in the room. “It's a weird thing, isn't it?”

“What is? Arabian gender roles? Classist attitudes towards health care? Or human cloning?”

She ducked just in time to miss the tiny throw pillow Cosima threw at her head. “You stinker,” Cosima giggled. “Although, yes, all three of those things are pretty weird.”

“So, what? What were you thinking of, little cheeky, violent love of my life?”

“Only moderately violent. And never with intention to harm.” Cosima rolled onto her side to face her. “What I was thinking about – what I've been thinking about all day, all week, really – is how most of us Ledas come from comfortable backgrounds. Like, we had to have parents wealthy enough to afford IVF, and that's not cheap.”

“No, it's not.”

“But then, there's someone like Nooran, who, okay, she's a refugee due to circumstances outside of her control, outside of her parents control, and the whole war in Yemen is a lot younger than we are, but Yemen was never wealthy. Nooran's family, from what I gathered, was never wealthy. Wealthy people, even when the bombs are falling, they don't end up in that kind of squalor. Right? I mean think about... what's-her-name, back in Tripoli.”

Delphine took a deep breath and thought back to their conversations with Nooran and the translator. Nooran's husband, killed in an air strike, had been a mechanic. He'd provided a stable living for his wife, and assisted greatly with Nooran's sister's family. But he couldn't have been wealthy, and no wealthy woman would have married him. “I suspect,” Delphine offered, “that Nooran's parents did not pay for IVF treatments.”

“So, what, they got them from free?”

“Mmm, yes, but they may not have known that's what they were getting.”

Cosima's eyes narrowed. “Like, her mom went in for a pap smear and came out pregnant?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps Dyad or Topside paid her to participate in the study, without telling her exactly what it was. Or maybe they did tell her, but they just said it was for an IVF treatment research project. Something like that.”

“And now there's no way of know which.”

“I don't think so. Both of Nooran's parents are dead.”

Cosima's nostrils flared and she rolled back onto her back. The muscle in her jaw twitched a few times, and Delphine rubbed her leg. 

“You saved her life, Cosima. Don't forget that.”

“I had lots of help.”

“Of course. No one does anything alone. But you should give yourself more credit for how much you've helped people, and how much you will continue to help people.”

“Yeah, it's not like I was super motivated to develop a cure to save my own selfish ass or anything.”

This again. Delphine flopped down beside her. “Cosima. Mon amour. Every single person, no matter how wonderful or philanthropic, operates out of selfish interests. All of us. And seriously, I was with you for part of that process, and while, yes, you were rightfully afraid for your own life, most of what you worried for was your sisters' safety, and Kira's safety, and the safety of Helena's children. So, please. Stop feeling badly that you wanted to cure yourself.”

For a few moments, the stubborn set of Cosima's jaw remained, but then she turned and gave her a small smile. 

“And besides,” Delphine went on, “think of me. Where would I be if you hadn't cured yourself?”

Now Cosima really smiled. “Oh, I dunno. Somewhere with far few Christmas gifts to worry about.”

“Tsk. I would still get presents for your family if...” Despite the levity of the conversation, her voice failed her. The mefloquine, thankfully, didn't give her nightmares like it did Cosima, but she'd had plenty without it, and many involved losing Cosima. 

“...if I died from clone disease?” Cosima asked.

“Yes. And I thought we were calling it Fitzsimmon's Carcinoma now?”

“We are. Lots of medical conditions have multiple names.”

“Mmm. Like _the shits_.”

Cosima cackled and rolled around on the bed in glee. “Yes! And you know it's totally fucking adorable when you say that.”

“I thought everything I said was adorable.”

“It is! That just proves my point. Normally, when I think of those two words together, I imagine some fat hairy guy from New Jersey who's just eaten too much cheap Chinese take-away. But when you say it, it's beautiful and charming and super fucking adorable.”

Shaking from giggles, she leaned in to kiss her. “Good.”

*

Just after seven pm, Art Bell called. “Hey,” he said, “I got your message, but, uh, I'm not sure how much I can do to help with this.”

Delphine sighed. Cosima was deep in her newest book, but she looked up at the sound of his voice.

“You said there are _five_ children?” he asked.

“Yes. And their aunt, of course, but I don't know that she wants to come.”

“It might be easier if she did. Just a little bit easier, but still, easier. She's their guardian, right?”

“Correct.”

“Well, here's the deal. In Canada, you can privately sponsor a family member or a dependent, or you can apply as a group of five or more to sponsor a refugee...”

“Five or more?” 

“Yeah, I guess it's to make sure if one person flakes out, the refugee still has someone. There's other ways to sponsor, too, with an organization or a corporation or whatever.”

“Like the Sadler and Daughter's Foundation.”

There was a pause on the other end. In the background, people chatted and laughed, and someone rustled a plastic bag. “Possibly,” Art said, finally. “But you need to realize, it takes years to process these sponsorship applications. I checked on the website earlier today just for shits and giggles, and for refugees from Djibouti, the anticipated wait time is 88 months.”

“I'm sorry, 88 months?”

“Yeah. Like, more than 7 years.”

“Merde...” Delphine sat down on the bed and leaned back against the head board. She thought back to the children in the one-bedroom apartment in Djibouti. In 7 years, Fatima, the oldest, would be 18, and the youngest would be 10. Then she remember what else their translator had told them, on their way out of the apartment. 

“Those boys,” Nawal said, “when they get older, won't remember which organization bombed their home and killed their parents. They will know that they're poor, and they will see the Americans, and the Chinese, with their giant ships just off the coast. And the terrorist groups, al-Qaida, IS, al-Shabab, will offer them money and adventure and women and all the things older boys want, and it will sound pretty good to them. I see it happening already.”

When Nawal told them that, Cosima's jaw had hardened. Delphine had simply asked, “and what about the girls?”

Nawal shrugged. “Pregnant before they turn 18. If they're lucky, they'll be married, too.”

On the phone now with Art, desperation crept in. “Isn't there anything we can do? Some way to speed things up? To get them into a foster family or a boarding school or, or _something_? Anything?”

He laughed softly. “Delphine, do you have any idea how many people are trying to get their kids into Canada right now?”

She didn't answer. For her, getting into Canada had been easy.

“I'm still looking,” he said, “but I wanted to touch base with you, so you know what the realities are for this situation. You say they're not in any immediate danger?”

“No. I don't think so. They are hungry, but not starving.”

“Isn't Djibouti doing something to help them out?”

Beside her, Cosima shifted, wanting to speak but knowing she wasn't invited just yet. Delphine put her hand on her thigh. “Djibouti got them the apartment,” Delphine said, “and the children are in school, to some extent. They have the basic needs met. They have indoor plumbing and electricity, most of the time.”

“Okay. Well, like I said, I'll keep trying, but I'm not too optimistic. If you want to officially sponsor, I'd suggest starting the application yesterday.”

She sighed. “Okay. Thank you, Art. Anything new about Malika?”

“No. We found a couple people with the same name, who were definitely not her. My guys are searching every variation we can think of, in case something's been misspelled, and still nothing.”

“Is there any chance that she's....?”

“That she's dead? If she died in any halfway developed country, there'd be a death certificate, and we haven't found one yet. We'll keep looking, though, don't worry.” He gave his best wishes to Cosima for her birthday tomorrow, and hung up to get back to work. 

* * *

Inoculating the Omani clone went smoothly. Her doctor told her the vaccine was preventative, and that was all she needed to hear. Delphine breathed a sigh of relief and spent the rest of the morning shopping in Muscat's upscale shopping centers.

When she returned around one, Cosima was showering after swimming laps in the outdoor pool. While Cosima rinsed the chlorine from herself, Delphine put on a looping Grimes playlist at a low volume and situated the pillows on their bed just so, with the top covers pulled all the way back. She set out the various massage oils she'd gotten that morning, and then she striped down to her underwear. She did some gentle stretches, then took her bra off. Neither of them would want her wearing that. On the nightstand she set two glasses of water and a plate of bite-sized dark chocolates. 

“Hey there, sexy.” Cosima swatted her ass and dropped a wet kiss between her shoulder blades. She dropped the bath towel on the other bed. 

“Hello yourself.”

“Are those for me?”

Delphine straightened up. “Non. They are for the goblins living under the bed. They looked hungry. How do you feel?”

Cosima smirked. “I feel great. This place might be expensive as fuck, but that restaurant on the second floor has a killer grilled kingfish. You should try it.”

“I will. But first -” She gestured to the massage oils. “- pick one.”

“Mhmm...” Cosima slid her naked ass onto Delphine's lap to inspect the selection. “This one. _French lavender._ I'm sure it's totally, actually French.”

Delphine shrugged. “It might be. Lay down.”

Cosima got on the bed, but kept herself propped up on one elbow. “And how exactly would you like me, Dr. Cormier?”

She knew exactly how she would like Cosima later on, but she wanted to work up to that. She popped open the bottle and doused her hands in oil. “That depends. Where do you want me to start?”

“Uhhhmm...” Cosima rolled her head to one side, then the other, showing off her lovely, bitable neck and jawline. “Start with my feet and work your way up?”

“As you wish, mon amour.” 

She slid off the bed as Cosima scooted into position with the fluffy pillow under her chest and her arms on either side, so her head rested at a more natural angle. Her feet were spread about a foot apart. Delphine perched on the edge of the bed and lifted Cosima's left foot onto her lap. As soon as she ran her thumbs down the arch, Cosima moaned, “Oh, fuck... Yeah, more of that, please.”

She spent several minutes of each of Cosima's feet, working out the tight bands of muscle and making a mental note to buy Cosima some shoes that wouldn't do this to the soles of her feet. She yanked on each of Cosima's toes, popping some of the tiny joints and making Cosima grunt just a little. Then she moved up to her calves. 

“You can just, like, use a rolling pin on those,” Cosima said, voice muffled.

“I'll keep that in mind for the next time I have a rolling pin.”

“Get one from Alison. Or Felix.”

Her calves were, as indicated, incredibly tight. Delphine kneaded each calf muscle for about five minutes, not nearly as long as Cosima wanted her to, but as long as she dared if she wanted her hands to keep working all the way to Cosima's hairline. And that's exactly what she wanted them to do, and then some. Dropping a kiss onto the backs of Cosima's knees, she paused to get more oil on her hands, and to appreciate the view from this angle. 

“For the next trip,” she said, “we should find a way to bring that strap-on.”

Cosima's grin was practically audible, even hidden behind the pillow and by the angle of her head. Her hips wiggled. “We could disguise it, as, like, a medical device.” Her voice took on a playful, exaggerated tone. “Um, actually, Chief Saudi Arabia Inspector Dude, I need that for an urgent medical condition. See, I have a note from certain a well-respected and super hot Dr. D. Cormier.”

Laughing, Delphine slapped her ass. “I almost want to see you try that.”

“I just want to see you wearing it again.” 

“You will. Soon enough.”

Cosima's thighs were as tight as the rest of her legs, and Delphine was sure that the rest of her muscles would be, as well, the product of weeks upon weeks of traveling, of scrunching up on airplane and bus seats, sleeping on questionable pillows, and walking twice as long as they'd planned to because _someone_ read Google Maps wrong. 

When she worked her way up to the tops of Cosima's thighs, Cosima's breathing deepened, hissing between her teeth in ways that did not relate to the tightness of her muscles. Delphine leaned over and kissed the little crease where Cosima's left butt cheek met her thigh. 

“Are you alright, chérie?”

“Oh, I am fan-fucking-tastic.”

“Good.”

Massaging Cosima's ass only increased Cosima's breathing. She pulled the pillow closer under her chest and let out a long, constant “nnnnnnggggg....” When Delphine switched to the other side, she tucked her knee between Cosima's upper thighs, and Cosima bucked back against it. She let her do that a few more times, digging into her right buttock with thumbs and the heels of her hands. Then she moved up and pushed her thumbs along the base of her spine. 

“Okay, no.” Cosima pushed herself up and turned over. “No more of that.”

“No?” Delphine scooted back an inch, but Cosima closed the distance and took her by the shoulders. With a nudge, she got Delphine on her back and climbed on top of her. 

“The back rub can wait.” She licked up Delphine's chest from her sternum to the bottom of her chin, and Delphine laughed.

“I wasn't doing a good job?”

“You -” Here Cosima nipped Delphine's left earlobe. “- were doing a little bit too good of a job, in some places.” She pulled back. “Wait. Did that massage therapist back in Toronto do all that?”

“He rubbed my back, my neck, my shoulders, and my feet. No one touches my butt but you.”

Cosima smirked. “You're damn right. Speaking of which...” She nudged Delphine's hip with her knee. “Why are you still wearing these? You're not on your period, are you?”

“I am not.” She shimmied most of the way out of her underwear, and Cosima did the rest, whipping them from Delphine's foot with a flourish and tossing them off to the side somewhere. 

She didn't waste much time, covering Delphine's torso and hips in big, wet, hungry kisses while her fingers stroked the insides of her thighs until Delphine was just as eager as she was. When Cosima's tongue met her clit, she cried out. It was okay. The walls here were thick and sound-proof; she'd checked in advance. 

Cosima's mouth stayed on her, hot and wet and messy, and then she tucked her arm under her face to slide her fingers in. First just one, then another, and another, until Delphine came all over her hand, screaming and grabbing the high thread count hotel sheets. 

For the blissful eternity it took for Delphine to drift back into reality, Cosima rested her cheek on Delphine's thigh and lightly rubbed Delphine's left calf just below the knee. 

“I think you needed that,” she said.

“Mmm... I think so. I was hoping to do it for you, though.”

“Do I look like I'm going anywhere this afternoon?”

She looked down her body at Cosima's face, glasses-free and squinting very slightly. She took a stray dread lock between her fingers and played with it. “No. I hope not.”

Cosima rubbed her cheek on Delphine's thigh and closed her eyes, then kissed her. “You don't have the energy right now, though.”

“Not to be as active as I want to be, no.”

“See?” Cosima scooted up a few inches and brushed her lips just under Delphine's naval. “This would be a great time for you to have that strap-on. You could just lay there and I'd ride you as hard as I wanted to.”

Her body wasn't horny anymore, but her heart ached at missing out on that particular experience, even if only for now. She took Cosima's head in her hands and pulled gently, encouraging her to come higher up, until she was on all fours face-to-face with Delphine, and Delphine could taste herself on Cosima's lips and tongue. Then she moved her right hand down between them and slid her middle finger up between Cosima's thighs. “Will this work?”

Cosima drew a sharp breath and stuck her tongue between her teeth. “That... could work quite nicely.”

She inched forward enough for Delphine to put two fingers comfortably inside her, then she ground her hips against her hand, her eyes half closed. With her left hand, Delphine reached up to massage her still-oily right butt cheek, tugging it enough to make Cosima grunt a little. 

“Hang on...” Cosima grabbed Delphine's wrist to keep it in place, and tipped herself upright. “Can you bend your knees?”

Delphine had a pretty good idea of what she was after, so she drew her legs up behind Cosima, close enough together to support her and wide enough to be comfortable for them both. Cosima adjusted her legs, still keeping Delphine's right hand exactly where it was, and tilted herself backwards to recline against her Delphine's legs. From this angle, Delphine could reach deeper inside of her, up to the third knuckle of three fingers. She wanted to try a fourth, but Cosima's hips were grinding faster and she was moaning now. Any change in the current set-up would throw that off. 

She had her thumb on Cosima's clit, but it was harder, actually, to manipulate from this angle, and her thumb joint got sore. She tried with her left hand, but Cosima swatted it away. 

“I'll do it.”

Keeping one hand on Delphine's leg behind her, Cosima rubbed her own clit with her first two fingers, her eyes on Delphine's face. Delphine had seen her do this before – they'd both done this in front of each other before, but her fascination never ceased. The way Cosima touched herself, after all, was one of the most personal, the most vulnerable things about her. 

“Nobody loves me like I do.” Cosima's voice drifted into her head from years ago, just after they'd started sleeping together. Still, Delphine always tried to. 

Cosima's moans got louder, peppered with word fragments and long-held vowels, and she tipped her head back, her entire weight resting Delphine's legs. Delphine kept her hand still, letting Cosima set the pace, the angle, and the pressure, and she watched, her other hand on Cosima's hip. 

“Oh, fuck fuck fuck fuck...”

Her thighs trembled on either side of Delphine's waist. Her fingers weren't moving as fast, though; she was trying to stretch it out, to build as much intensity as possible. The fingers on her left hand dug into Delphine's leg. That was good; she liked it when Cosima left marks. 

Delphine twisted her fingers oh-so-slightly counter-clockwise, and Cosima screamed. She pushed her pelvis down onto both of their hands and threw her head back so far her dread tickles the tops of Delphine's feet. She stayed there, thrashing and bucking her hips, until Delphine's hand was about to fall off, and then she slid off to the side, disengaging from Delphine's hand with a squelch. 

“Ho-ly fuck.”

Delphine giggled. “And, I think _you_ also needed that.”

Cosima's only answer was a weak, “oh, shit.” Then she smiled, or half of her face did, anyways. The other half was still recovering. 

Delphine got off the bed to a small whine from Cosima. She dimmed the lights and drank half a glass of water. The other half she handed to Cosima, helping her lift her head to drink it from the bed. 

“You planned ahead.”

“I usually do.” She wrapped herself around Cosima's body, then broke away to pull the covers over them, and curled around her again. “Bon anniversaire, mon amour. Je t'aime.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Holy mother of fucking cock shit.” Cosima collapsed into the plump leather booth near the entrance of the restaurant, her sweater flapping around her while Delphine laughed and settled in across from her. 

“How long have you been waiting to say that?”

“Fucking hell. How long do you think?”

They were in the Istanbul airport, shedding the remains of Saudi Arabia and breathing in the secular air of urban Turkey for a few hours before transferring to Toronto. They ordered cocktails and sweet bread, and once it arrived, Delphine leaned back and sighed. Things were looking up already.

Cosima, on the other hand, fiddled with the napkin under her mojito and rubbed her forehead. Even after a few sips, her demeanor didn't improve, so Delphine gave her a gentle kick under the table. 

“Hey. I thought you'd be happy to leave?”

“Oh, I am! I definitely am. Let's never go back there.”

“Then what's wrong?”

Cosima did that thing where she shrugged with her face instead of her shoulders. “Nothing's wrong.”

“Hm.” Delphine drank some more and pretended to believe her for a minute. Pushing Cosima never helped, and anyway airports were terrible places for emotionally charged conversations. 

Cosima drank about a quarter of her cocktail before she leaned back in the booth and looked at the glass like it had insulted her mother. “I'll probably order this again in a month or two, won't I?”

Delphine blinked. “I don't know. Do you want to?”

“No. But by the time May rolls around – we're gonna be here in May, right? - I will have forgotten that it's too heavy on the lime juice and too light on the mint, and I'll order it again because I'll be exhausted then, too.”

“Make yourself an alert on your phone for those dates. _Do not order a mojito in Istanbul._ We might not have as much time then, anyways.”

“Let's hope not.” Cosima closed her eyes then and rubbed them with the heels of her hands. 

“Are you feeling alright, though? Other than exhausted?”

“Yeah. Fucking great.”

Delphine nodded and kept her mouth shut. Cosima was cranky, refusing to admit it, and bottling up whatever was bothering her. She'd been like this on their way to the airport in Riyadh, too, but Delphine had explained that away as irritation about their treatment by the Saudi Arabian authorities. But now they were partway back to Toronto, for a three-day group birthday celebration with her sisters, and the irritability remained.

Cosima checked the time and fidgeted in her seat. “The sestra in Bursa – you know, the one with the bulldogs? Özlem is her first name, I think?”

Delphine nodded.

“She posted something on Twitter this morning about cough treatments. We could check it out while we're here in Turkey.”

“We could...” Delphine watched her body language. Cosima was definitely twitchy. “However, on Facebook this morning she said it was bronchitis. There was no mention of blood or anything else worrisome.”

“Yeah, well, you know doctors don't know what they're looking at half the time.” It could have been a joke, but there was no accompanying smirk. Just Cosima's fingers tapping at her hairline. And it was almost true, when it came to clone disease. Most doctors did not know what they were looking at, and misdiagnoses were the norm. In this case, though...

“I trust that if a doctor says she has bronchitis, then she has bronchitis. If her cough were bloody, she would have a different diagnosis.”

“Did her doctor really say that, though? She never posts in English.”

Delphine arched an eyebrow. “And yet, you know that she was referring to cough treatments on Twitter.”

“I do. There was a picture of hot tea and cough drops, and she used the word _öksürük_ , which means _cough_ , and I remember that word because it has three fucking umlauts in it.”

Despite herself, Delphine smiled. “Yes, that's very impressive, chérie. But, I also have Google translate, and she said that she has bronchitis, and the word _doctor_ was in there, too.”

Cosima still pouted. “Google fucks things up sometimes, though. Remember when I tried to say in French that I was _cranky_ , and Google told me I should use _excitable_?”

“Yes. And that's why I also took screenshots of Özlem's statuses recently and sent them to our Turkish translators back in Toronto.”

The waiter came back to check on them and expressed dismay that they'd had so little of their drinks. “Not good?” he asked. “Something different, maybe?”

Delphine smiled up at him. “No, thank you. Just taking our time.”

Across the table, Cosima stopped fidgeting and slumped against the wall. “You know, I bet Alison makes a killer mojito. I'll have to arrange for all four of us to get smashed out of our skulls sometime this trip. You know I've never seen Helena drunk.”

“You can do that. Spend the night at Alison's house, maybe.”

Finally, Cosima cracked a smile. “What, you don't want to sleep with me when I'm drunk off my ass?”

“It's not that, although you do talk in your sleep more than usual when you're intoxicated. I just don't want you going anywhere when you're drunk off your ass.”

Cosima opened her mouth as if to argue, but shook her head and took another sip of her mojito before pushing it to the edge of the table for the waiter or busboys to pick up, and then laced her fingers together behind her neck. “It does seem like a real waste, though, to be right here and not vaccinating the, like, nine clones who live in Turkey. There's three right here in Istanbul, for fuck's sake. They could even be self-aware, who knows. One of them might even work at the airport! She might be at that hat shop just over there!”

“She might be. One of clones here is a personal trainer, but I don't know about the other two.”

“A personal trainer. So she's in great shape, is that what you're telling me?”

Delphine rolled her eyes, then reached across the table to poke the up-curled corner of Cosima's mouth. “Yes, I expect she can bench press both of us at the same time. So what?”

Cosima straightened up and leaned over the table. “You know where she works, yeah? We can slip over there, give her the shot, and have one less clone to take care of in four weeks.”

Delphine checked the time. Her cell phone read 12:10 pm, so they had another hour before boarding would begin for their next flight. Only an hour. “I don't think Alison would be very pleased if we missed our flight, though. And I don't think she _or_ Sarah would be excited about you missing out on Clone Fest.”

“But Helena wouldn't give a shit, is that what I'm hearing?”

“Cosima...”

Before Cosima could reply, Delphine's phone dinged with a new email. “It's Deniz. She agrees – based on what I sent her, Özlem has bronchitis, probably nothing more. We can wait four more weeks before treating her. In fact, it's probably best that we do. We don't need to catch bronchitis ourselves.”

“Yeah, alright. Fine.”

“Hey.” She rubbed Cosima's leg with her foot under the table. “What's the matter, really? I thought you'd be happy to go home, to see everyone, to be in a slightly less restrictive place for a couple of days.”

Cosima looked around the booth to watch the people going by. Many of the women wore hijabs, and a small handful had niqabs to cover their faces, but for every woman with her face covered there were two more in halter tops, short shorts, or bight red lipstick. Teenagers held hands or made out with their backs to information kiosks. And she and Delphine had cocktails in front of them at at 11 am local time. 

“I don't think Istanbul's all that restrictive,” Cosima said. “I've heard there's even a relatively visible queer community here.”

“Relatively.”

“Well, it's not San Fran, but no place is.”

“And the Turkish government is more restrictive with each passing month, including being more oppressive of LGBT people and groups. We will have to be just as careful walking around Istanbul as walking around Cairo or Casablanca, and even more careful in the countryside. You know this.” She watched Cosima resume fidgeting, tapping her fingers on the table and jiggling her leg. “Cosima, do you not want to go back?”

“Of course I want to go back.”

“Then why are you being like this?”

Cosima tossed her head back and for a minute Delphine thought she wasn't going to answer, but then she said, “Of course I want to go back. Just not for, like, three days. Not for just long enough to get back on Toronto time, and then have to leave again.”

“Ahh. I see. I think.”

“Like, we'll spend the entire time we're there working on clone stuff anyway.”

“Not the entire time. We're going to see your sisters, not to work.”

Cosima waved that idea away. “Basically the entire time. And we'll be checking the news every two hours, or checking in with Waheed and Fahad to make sure we can still get around Iraq safely, or whatever.” She nodded at the waiter and gestured for him to just take her glass away. “We could have just flown to Baghdad from Riyadh and we'd have one more sister cured by the end of the day today. We're just prolonging the entire thing.”

Delphine considered this. She was right, but they'd discussed this already, back in January, in Sarah's kitchen. They'd decided that celebrating everyone's birthday together, celebrating their lives and their survival, was important enough to come back for a few days. “Well, if you really want to, you could call Alison and tell her we've changed our plans.”

Cosima's face told her exactly how excited she was about that suggestion. “No. No, thank you, I'd like to not be skinned alive by my sister.”

“She might use a fancy knife.”

“Oh, God, she would. Or, she'd, like, cut all my digits off with fabric scissors or something, strangle me with frilly multicolored ribbon. No, we'll go.”

*

Eleven hours later, they landed in Toronto, too sleepy to care much about view as they approached the city. It was the longest single stretch they'd ever spent on one plane; flying into North Africa in January they'd done 9 hours to Vienna, then transferred, and that was bad enough. At least it was first class this time, so they'd been able to nap some and eat halfway-decent meals.

Just like their last arrival in Canada, Sarah greeted them at the Toronto airport. This time, however, she was alone. The girls were in school, and Alison was busy with the school board and managing Bubbles. 

“You looked a lot more tan the last time I picked you up,” Sarah said. “I thought you were in the desert this whole time?”

“We were. And trust me,” Cosima said, “we're not nearly as tan as we'd like to be.”

Sarah took her shoulder bag from her and grimaced. “Like I said, Cos, you must really love all of our sisters to put up with Saudi bullshit for a whole fucking week.”

“Nine days,” Delphine said, “actually.”

“Nine days? I thought you were in Dubai last week?”

“We were in Abu Dhabi,” Cosima suggested, “just before Saudi Arabia. But not Dubai.”

“Oh. Alison kept talking about Dubai, so I figured you'd gone. Sorry.”

Sarah's car was now decorated with a pair of new bumper stickers, boasting honor roll students at the local elementary and middle schools.

“You're turning into Alison,” Cosima joked, tapping the stickers as Sarah unlocked the trunk. 

In response, Sarah raised her middle finger and made a face. “I never made honor roll. I barely passed each grade. I'm allowed to be proud that my kid and my little sister got all As. Twice, actually, this year, for both of them.” 

Cosima settled into the front passenger seat while Delphine slumped into the back behind her, purse in her lap out of habit from months of taxi riding. “Dude, you're totally allowed,” Cosima told her sister. “That's awesome. How about you? How are your classes going?”

The last few times Delphine had heard them speak over Skype, the conversations had focused on the girls, with side trips to other members of Clone Club, the twins, and the fluctuating weather Toronto had been having. Now Sarah shrugged and sniffed – the classic Sarah Manning aloofness they were used to. “They're a'right,” she said. “Math prof's set me up with a tutor, but I'm not sure it's helping much.”

“No? Maybe you need a different tutor.”

Sarah scoffed. “Maybe I need a different fucking brain. English is better, though. I got an A on my last essay.” 

“That's awesome, Sestra! Good for you!”

“Yeah, it's good. The prof says I have interesting ideas. Interesting, like, in a _good_ way, like I don't write the same old shite as everyone else does. She says my big problems are grammar and organization.”

“You can get that down, though,” Cosima assured her. “It's the ideas that are hard, sometimes. Didn't you tell me once that you used to love reading?”

Sarah's face immediately closed up. “What? No, I didn't tell you that.”

Cosima's voice changed, too, to match Sarah's sudden shift in tone. “Oh, sorry. Must've been Felix, then, that told me that.”

Sarah was quiet for a while as they turned and the road followed the banks of Lake Ontario, offering a placid gray view that was surprisingly refreshing after so much time in deserts. She spoke again several minutes later, after they'd turned again and headed into the heart of the city. “I did used to like reading, though. I read all the time, when I was Kira's age, up through maybe 16 or so. I didn't tell anybody, of course. Dunno why Felix would've told you.”

“Why not?” Delphine asked. After all, the only friends she'd had as a teenager had bonded with her over reading and school work.

They were stopped at a light, and Sarah turned a bit, as if surprised that Delphine was still back there. “I dunno. I just didn't want people to know. I stopped, anyways, in high school. I never read whatever shite the teachers gave me. I was never in advanced English or anything, not like Charlotte is, and you know they always give the dumb kids really stupid books to read.”

Delphine and Cosima sat on that thought as downtown Toronto sped by and Sarah steered them to the Rabbit Hole. Once there, Sarah helped them carry their suitcases inside, where Hell-wizard greeted them. Delphine looked forward to a very early bedtime until Sarah asked, “You two still up to chat with Helena tonight?” 

Chat with Helena. Right. _Putain_. 

“Yeah,” Cosima said, obviously feigning enthusiasm. “Of course we are.”

*

That evening, after a huge welcome-back dinner at Alison's house, Delphine and Cosima joined Helena and Sarah in the garage apartment to Talk. The twins were kept in the main house with the Hendrixes, to allow the conversation to go uninterrupted, and they all – three sestras plus Delphine – had hot beverages prepared by Alison, who'd refused Sarah's request to add alcohol to help lubricate the conversation.

“You all need clear heads for this,” Alison had said. 

Delphine agreed. However this little talk went, everyone needed to be sober, but especially Helena, whose consent was most essential. So they settled into Helena's home space, with Cosima and Delphine perched on the bed, Sarah spread-legged on the chair, and Helena cross-legged on the floor. Sarah started for them.

“You know,” she began, “before you and I met, before we were really a family, you had a different job. A job with Tómas.”

Helena took a deep breath. She'd been told that they wanted to talk to her about the past, but until now no one had pushed the topic. “Yes,” she said. “But Tómas is dead now.”

“Yeah, and that's great, but, we...” Sarah looked down at her glass, then back to Helena, then to Cosima and Delphine.

Cosima stepped in. “We're going to Europe in a couple months, right? And we're trying to figure out where all the clones are over there, and if they're still alive.”

“Yes, I know this.”

Delphine cleared her throat. She had the feeling that, let to themselves, Cosima and Sarah might skirt the issue forever. “We understand that, under Tomas' orders, you were forced to kill some of the clones in Europe.”

Helena shifted on the ground, her eyes darting around and not landing on anyone. “Yes.”

Cosima handed the papers in her hands to Delphine and slid onto the floor across from Helena, ducking her head a little to put herself lower, the way Delphine had seen her do before, with others who needed a gentle approach. She'd even done it with Delphine a couple of times. “We know you didn't understand what you were doing. You didn't mean to. We're not blaming you.”

“I knew that I was killing.”

“Right, but you didn't know they were our sisters. You... you had the wrong ideas in your head.”

“Yes.”

“But we kind of need to know, like, how many sestras you, um, you got to before... before you came over to Canada. Before you left the Proletheans.”

“Before I met Sarah.”

Cosima nodded. “Yeah, exactly.”

Helena hugged her arms to her chest. “I do not remember exactly. Tómas... Tómas kept track. He had list, and he-” She licked her lips and rocked back and forth. “He told me where to go, who to kill. They were sheep, he said. And I did not count them. I did not count sheep, as you do not count insects when you kill them.”

Cosima tried hard not to kill insects at all, but she remembered the mosquitoes in Central America, in Bahir Dar, even in Toronto in the summer, and she conceded Helena's point. “That's okay. That makes sense. Are you... are you okay talking with us about all this?”

“Yes.”

“You're sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Thank you. You don't have to remember the numbers, that's okay. Do you remember any names? Cities where they lived?”

“Names, no. Yes. Some names, later. Katja Obinger. Elizabeth Childs. Alison Hendrik.”

Sarah cut back in with, “Wait, you knew about Alison?”

“Yes.” She kept her arms crossed, and still rocked, but she straightened her spine and looked into the space between Sarah and Delphine, gaze focused on the invisible past. “We were in new country, new continent. Tómas trusted me more than before. Before, there were no names. But then I did good job, killed many sheep, and he began to tell me names. In Europe, one name, one kill. _Tzak_.” She made a gun with her hand and shot an imaginary clone, then another. “Another name. _Tzak_.”

“And, do you remember any of those names?” Cosima asked.

“Danielle, in France. Aryanna, Italy. Others I have forgotten. Italy was beautiful country, I remember.”

Delphine watched Helena's face as she spoke, watched how her eyes avoided contact and her lips twitched, and listened to the changing pitches of her voice. She was lying about some of it, almost certainly, and a glance at Sarah told her that she suspected it as well. Delphine couldn't blame her, though, for wanting to conceal or forget what she'd done. 

Cosima nodded. “That's okay. Thank you. Were they the only ones you killed there? In those countries, I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” 

“There were others, too, in other countries. Austria, Poland, Belarus, Russia. A country that was not Ukraine, and not Russia, but very much like. I understand most of what they say there, but it was strange. We did not stay long.”

“You killed someone there?”

“Two. One in house, one on bicycle. The one on bicycle had shaved head, I remember.”

“Okay.” Delphine jotted it all down, even what they already knew. This country Helena mentioned could be one of many Slavic nations, or it could in fact be Ukraine or Russia, despite her claims to the contrary. From what she'd heard, Tómas kept Helena very much in the dark. 

Silence settled over the garage apartment, broken only by the tap of rain drops on the roof. Helena slowed her nervous rocking, but kept her gaze fixed at the corner. Eventually, Delphine spoke up.

“You said Tómas kept a list of the Ledas?”

“Yes.”

“Where did he get it?”

Now Helena cocked her head and looked at Delphine, who was, perhaps, an easier face to look at just now. “Maggie Chen.”

Sarah bounced forward in her seat. “Maggie Chen, of course. And she had a locker, didn't she?”

Helena shook her head. “Not in locker. Locker is too obvious, too easy to find.”

“What about that old ship you were on?” Sarah asked. “The one... you know which one I'm talking about.”

“Yes, I know. The ship is gone, I think.”

“We could find that out,” Cosima said. “That should be pretty easy.” Moving slowly, she rested a hand on Helena's forearm. “Would you like to come with us if it's still there? You don't have to.”

“No.” 

“Okay. I thought so, but I just thought I'd ask.”

She removed her hand from Helena's arm and watched her face. In the silence that followed, Delphine thought of all the various traumas Helena had endured, and the effects they must have had on her brain development. _Did anyone even hold her when she was a baby, and she cried?_

Helena looked at Cosima then, made eye contact, and said, “We would have found you, too, Sestra. I do not think you hide well.”

Cosima smiled. “I hid well enough when I needed to.”

“Hm.” Helena smiled and reformed her hand into a gun, then ran her gun-muzzle-fingers over Cosima's forehead. “ _Tzak_ ,” she said. 

Delphine had no doubt that Helena was joking, or showing off, or deflecting, and had no serious intention to shot Cosima in the forehead. Still, the gesture unsettled her, and she had to force herself to stay seated, biting her tongue for the moment. 

“We'll just be happy that you didn't get to me before you met Sarah, then,” Cosima said. 

“Yes. Very happy.” Helena pulled herself to her feet and put her hot chocolate mug in the little sink by the fridge. “Because you have cure for us all. Without you, there is no us. Only myself, and Sarah. Everyone else, dead. But now, I must go. My babies need me.” 

She opened the door and looked at them all, the universal signal for “get out,” so they thanked her, and left her apartment. Helena followed and closed the door behind them.

Back in the Hendrix's house, in the basement away from the children playing upstairs, Cosima sat on the sofa with her legs folded up beneath her, Delphine beside and curled around her, absorbing her warmth. She was beyond exhausted, extra relaxed by the cup of herbal tea yet still unsettled by the image of a gun pointing at her beloved's face. She rested her face against the top of Cosima's head, breathed in the familiar Cosima-travel-smell, and let the follow-up conversation drift over her.

“That could have gone better, I think,” Cosima remarked.

Sarah sat in an armchair and nursed a fresh beer. “Yeah? Helena doesn't know much. Tómas only told her what he wanted her to know, and kept her in a bloody cage the rest of the time. I do think she remembers more than she's letting on, though.”

Cosima shifted to give herself room to talk with her hands. “Oh, yeah, I know that. That's not what I meant. I meant, I feel like I – we – could've done a better job of taking care of her feelings. That's, like, massive trauma, and we just, like, went in there and dug it all up again.”

“It's not like she'll never have to deal with it, though.”

“You mean, like, if the boys start asking her questions one day?”

“For example. Kids are nosy. They won't think anything's weird for years and years, but one day, they'll wanna know where they came from, and where their mom came from, and they'll start asking. If Helena doesn't tell them, they'll ask Alison or one of us. Kira might tell them one day out of the blue. They'll notice that all the other kids in school have parents that went to school – at least high school. I don't think if Helena's ever been to school other than the convent.”

Helena's sons would have a whole mess of curiosities to figure out as they got older, but at the moment, Cosima didn't seem too concerned with that. “I just want Helena to feel like she has control. Like, she doesn't have to tell us anything, you know?”

Sarah scoffed. “Doesn't have to, but it might save you a shit ton of time if she does, yeah? Like that one clone from whatever country, the one you couldn't find?”

“Malika,” Delphine chimed in. “From Morocco.”

“Malika from Morocco, yeah. You'd think I'd remember that. Anyway, imagine if she actually got offed by Helena while she was on holiday in Paris or wherever, and it never got recorded. We'd never fucking know.”

Cosima rolled her head around, disrupting Delphine's comfortable headrest. “I guess that's possible.”

“She might not've even known her name, and Tómas, neither. Maybe Malika was just sitting at some café and Helena noticed she had the same face, and _pop_.” Sarah made her own finger gun to mime the shooting. 

“The French police would've figured it out, though,” Delphine said. “Not that she was a clone, of course, but they would've identified the body and there would be a death certificate somewhere.”

“What if they couldn't ID her, though? Like, when Katja died-” Sarah leaned forward, her fresh bottle of beer in one hand. “-and, and I had to get rid of her body, her face got crushed.”

“What?” Delphine had not been aware of that, only that Katja Obinger was dead, and that she'd been the one who initiated the self-awareness of the North American sestras.

Cosima turned and patted her leg. “I'll... tell you more about that later, okay?” To Sarah, she said, “So? The police eventually reconstructed it, and identified her. Just like they could do with any of Helena's other victims. She didn't... vanish them completely. I'm not sure I'm seeing your point here, Sarah.”

“My point is, you need Helena to talk to you about this stuff. It's too important for her not to talk about it.”

Cosima yawned and rubbed her stomach. “Maybe. What's really important for me right now, though, it to go to bed. And to get this lady to bed before she falls asleep on top of me.” With a nudge, she got Delphine up on her feet, and five minutes later they were on their way back to the Rabbit Hole.

* * *  
* * *

When Delphine woke the next morning, a few hours before meeting the sestras and brother-sestra for lunch downtown, Cosima was already awake, wearing a knee-length robe and flitting around her lab like a butterfly in a garden, her hips swaying to the beat of whatever her ear phones were playing. The rich spiciness of chai filled the basement, covering up the scents of mothballs and mildew that had greeted them the day before. Delphine padded up behind her fiancée while she organized a shelf of vaccination tubes, and kissed the side of her neck until she plucked out one of her ear phones. 

“You're in a better mood,” Delphine remarked.

“Yeah, a little bit. Horny, though.” 

She must have been up for longer than Delphine originally thought, then. Sex and just-woke-up-Cosima didn't usually work out for the best. “Is that something I can help you with?”

“I sure hope so.” Cosima turned in her arms and draped her arms around her neck. “But only if you're up for it. You still look pretty sleepy.”

“Hm.” Delphine ran her hands up and down Cosima's sides and hips. “I could be up for it, yes.”

Cosima giggled and pecked her on the lips. “Good. Because I have had this thought in my head for, like, two months now, and there's only one way to shake it.”

“What idea is that?” 

Cosima dropped her robe on the nearest chair and skipped over to their closet in nothing but her glasses and slippers. “Oh, you know. Fucking your brains out. Making you scream. All that good stuff. Where is it, by the way?”

“Hm? Where's what?” 

“My Christmas present. What else?” Cosima buried herself in the closet, pushing through clothes on hangers and giving Delphine a great view of her ass when she bent down to look on the floor.

“Your Christmas present?” Delphine repeated as she caressed Cosima's right ass cheek, but Cosima pushed herself deeper into the closet. 

“Yes. The harness with the vibrating cock, or whatever.”

“Oh, that. It's in the shoe box on the top shelf.”

“The top...” Cosima straightened and looked up. The top shelf was high enough that, unless she wore significant heels, she could only touch the edge with her fingers, and she had to back up a few feet to see what was on it. Her dreads whipped around as she turned to Delphine with a fake scowl. “Are you hiding it from me?”

“Tch. No.” She swatted Cosima's hip and retrieved the box, standing on her toes but not struggling. Handing it to Cosima, she said, “Here you go.” 

Cosima snatched it away. “Ah ha. Not hiding it from me, just limiting my access to it. I'm onto you, Cormier.” 

She scurried into the bathroom get herself ready, and Delphine climbed back on the bed, over the covers, after stripping out of her night clothes. Unbidden, her mind drifted in other directions, tugged by the scents of cardamom and cloves and her own body, by dreams of the desert and memories of being a late teenager on break at her mother's house. She remembered Rashid's rough hands, the taste of Djarum cigarettes on his breath, the way he'd lifted her by the thighs and fucked her senseless. At that point in her life, she could count on one hand the number of orgasms men had given her. Two of them came from Rashid. 

She was just thinking of how Cosima probably wasn't tall enough to fuck her on a surface like that, when Cosima landed right beside her, the electric blue dildo flapping against Delphine's hip. 

“What were you thinking about?” she asked, after kissing Delphine's lower lip.

Delphine smiled and stroked the sides of her neck. She was soft, infinitely softer than anyone else she'd been with, and the lighting in the basement brought out the green in her eyes. “Mmmm, nothing important.”

“Nothing important?” Cosima nipped the tip of her nose. “I don't believe you.” She moved her way down, knocking into Delphine's thighs and pelvis with the dildo as she did so. 

“Nothing that's important right now.”

“I see.” Cosima opened her mouth wide and put as much of Delphine's right breast as possible inside, swirling her tongue around the nipple and sending shock waves through Delphine's body. 

Delphine hissed and arched her back to put as much of her self as possible into Cosima, but after a moment, after grazing her nipple with her teeth, Cosima stopped.

“Was it, like, something that's totally awesome but you're worried I'll laugh about it, or something really deep and serious that would totally kill the mood if you told me?”

“Nothing deep...” But then Delphine thought of the double meaning of that word, especially since Cosima and that dildo were positioned right between her legs, and giggled, and kept giggling as Cosima cocked her head and squinted with her lips pursed. 

“Uh huh. So you're gonna laugh that like, but you're not gonna tell me?” She tickled Delphine's ribs and when Delphine pushed her hands away she gave her her best puppy-dog eyes. “Please?”

“I told you, it's not important. I'd much rather focus on you right now.”

“Hmm...” Cosima stuck her tongue between her teeth and looked over Delphine like she was a particularly tasty dessert she wasn't sure how to tackle. Delphine ran her hands up over Cosima's arms and shoulders to massage behind her ears. She'd removed her glasses, and Delphine reflected that these days she saw her as much with them as without them – an unique and illustrious position to be in. She was also pouting again, but when Delphine tilted her head up to kiss her, Cosima pulled away.

“I don't why, but it's kinda bothering me now,” she said. 

“What?” Delphine asked. 

“That you won't tell me what you were thinking about. Like, I know that we're both allowed to have, like, privacy and our own inner thoughts, but... I dunno. Maybe it's just because it's what you used to do, you know, before.”

“Before.” Before they both shared everything, before their trust was absolute and unconditional. She kept her hands behind Cosima's ears and rubbed her earlobes with her thumbs. “If it's really bothering you, I'll tell you.”

Cosima tipped her head to the side and gave her a small smile. “You gonna make me feel like an asshole?”

“I hope not. Actually, I was thinking about that Tunisian boyfriend I had. You know, the carpenter.”

Her eyebrows went up, but she didn't seem put off by it. “Oh?”

“There was one day when he picked me up and sat me on top of my mother's washing machine and...” Despite all this time speaking quite frankly with Cosima about sex, she blushed. 

“And...?” Cosima's voice had a distinctly amused challenge in it. “Don't tell me he just read you poetry up there.”

She snorted. “No. He fucked me up there.”

“Was it good?”

“Yes.”

Cosima nodded. She's pulled her dreads back so they didn't tickle Delphine, but Delphine almost wished she hadn't. She was used to playing with them when they talked like this. Instead, she traced the lines and contours of Cosima's collar bone. 

“Why didn't you want to tell me?” Cosima asked. 

She let out a long breath. They were supposed to be having sex right now, not talking about why Delphine still held back and didn't talk about everything. “Because I don't really want to go into sex with you thinking about sex with someone else, or with you thinking of me having sex with someone else. Because I don't want you to think that I want to sleep with anyone else. The usual.”

“Hm.” Cosima shifted into a more comfortable position and nuzzled her neck, dropping sweet little kisses. “You know I don't think any of those things.”

“I know.”

Cosima's mouth travelled up to nibble on her earlobe. “Do you want me to fuck you on a washing machine?”

“I would like you to fuck me in, and on, all kinds of places.”

“In, on, under, between...” Cosima's tongue trailed along her jaw to her mouth, ending with a delicious cinnamon flavored kiss. “We could do, like, a whole series of prepositions-based fucks.”

“We could. It would really, euh, spice up someone's grammar class, maybe.”

“Totally.” She kissed her again, then scooted back down to kiss and suck on the tender place above her collarbones, giving suggestions in the meantime. “Prepositions of place – We had sex _on_ the bed. We fucked _in_ the planetarium.”

Delphine laughed and swatted her arm. “No, we didn't!”

“Shh, that's not important.” While she lavished her neck with attention, Cosima's hands moved up and down her sides, from her hip bones to the sides of her breasts, at an asymmetric pace. “Prepositions of direction – I fucked you to the moon.”

By this point, Delphine's arousal overcame her amusement, and she rolled Cosima onto her back. Cosima might have made some comment, something about Delphine always wanting to top, or more about fucking prepositions, but Delphine got her nipple between her teeth and her tongue, and all Cosima managed was a mix of a groan and a moan. Delphine stayed there, working her nipple with every available part of her mouth, but her hand travelled down over Cosima's hips and thighs, then up between her legs, to the little mechanized nub tucked into the harness just over her vagina. 

“You have fucked me to the moon many times, chérie.”

Delphine reached for the little vibration controller that Cosima had dropped beside her on the bed, but Cosima kept it just out of reach. “We'll get to that. It sounded kind of like you wanted me to fuck you up on top on something.” She looked around as though she didn't already know the space inside and out. “Too bad we don't have laundry machines in here, though, and uh, most of the other machinery would probably break if we tried it.”

“It's okay, mon amour. I just want you, nothing else.” She kissed her lips to emphasize her point, holding her body down when Cosima tried to flip their positions. In doing so, Delphine lifted her pelvis so that the dildo was conveniently positioned to rub against her clit when she lowered herself back down again. “This works nicely for me,” she said. 

“Yeah?” Cosima watched her face, the parted lips and hooded eyes as Delphine ground her hips against her cock. “You're beautiful,” she whispered. 

There would never be a day in Delphine's life when her heart didn't flop over just hearing Cosima say that. In response, Delphine caught her mouth in a big sloppy kiss, and Cosima held her close, raking little pricks of pain down her back with her fingernails. The tip of the dildo slid inside of her, and she ground her hips down to get more, using her hand to assist, but despite Cosima's ragged breath egging her on, and the thick smell of arousal all around them, she wasn't getting any farther. She needed much deeper penetration than this, and more than that, she needed Cosima to pound the hell out of her.

With a grunt, she pried herself off of Cosima and pulled Cosima up into a sitting position. “It's not enough. Here, do it this way.” While Cosima got her limbs back in order, Delphine got on all fours and gathered the pillows under her torso for support. For the first time, she was not annoyed that Alison had given them so many goddamn pillows. Behind her, Cosima made an appreciative little moan.

“Oh, we're doing it this way? Which, uh, which way _exactly_ would you prefer?” To make her clear, Cosima ran her fingers from the tip of Delphine's clitoris back through the crack of her ass, making Delphine shudder. 

“Mmmm... vagina this time. I don't think we have any lube right now.”

“Oh, shit, you're right. That would be problem for anal, wouldn't it? Okay. Your wish is my command. And, I will put that on the shopping list ASAP.” She kept her hand between Delphine's legs as Delphine settled into a comfortable ass-up position, with the edge of one of the pillows rubbing nicely against the side of her clit, enough to stimulate without pushing her all the way. 

Cosima kept her fingers light between her legs, kissing her way up and around Delphine's back, and giggled when Delphine snapped, “Stop teasing and fuck me, Cosima!”

“Mmmm, yes, ma'am...” 

The angle was much better this, and her breath caught in her throat as Cosima filled up, scratching the itch deep inside her and grabbing her hips. 

“Is it good?”

“Yes. Yes yes yes.”

“Good.” Cosima worked up to a steady rocking rhythm, running her hands all over Delphine's back, hips, and thighs. 

As she felt herself getting close, though, she fumbled around the bedding for the little vibrator controller, cursing herself for not paying better attention earlier. Cosima paused, her fingers clamped to the side of Delphine's hip and her own hips still, as Delphine scrounged around. “You okay?” she asked, her voice husky in that way where Delphine knew exactly how turned on she was.

“Oui,” she said once she had it. “Continue, s'il te plait.”

She switched it on, and any response Cosima might have had was swallowed by a moan as the thumb-sized vibrator buzzed away. 

As expected, it didn't take long after that. Delphine came first, screaming and clawing at the sheets and pillows as her body spasmed around the cock her lover kept pushing into her, until she collapsed and pulled herself away from Cosima, who fumbled with the straps of the harness until she tore it off, still buzzing. Then, artlessly, she rolled onto her back and fucked herself senseless under Delphine's limp arm. 

Neither of them realized they'd drifted off until Cosima's phone rang, interrupting Delphine lovely little dream with the chorus of “I am the Walrus,” Cosima's song of the week. Delphine reluctantly released her hold on Cosima's waist to let her answer, and listened to the tinny squawking on the other end, and to Cosima's sleepy replies.

“Oh, shit...” Cosima muttered. “Yeah, no, we'll... we'll be right there. No, no, everything's fine. Just got, uh, a little caught up on some things over here...”

Even in her post-coital euphoria, Delphine got the overall message – they were late for clone club brunch downtown. She pulled herself from the bed, feeling her skin tug where it had stuck to the sheets. The vibrator, she noticed, was off, though she didn't remember Cosima turning it off. Maybe it had just buzzed itself out, the poor thing. They'd have to get some more batteries for it, at any rate. 

After they'd freshened themselves up and dressed, Cosima paused to look around the lab space, almost like it was their last time there. 

“Come on,” Delphine said, tugging her hand. “Alison's already annoyed with us.”

But then Cosima smiled, that little inside-joke smile she got in the Middle East when Delphine flirted with her under the radar. “Yeah, I know. I was just thinking... we could totally put a washing machine in here, don't you think?”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hiatus, everyone. With my current schedule, there's going to be longer pauses between chapters, but I am still writing them!
> 
> Many, many thanks to sapphicviolets and youvetornyourdress over on Tumblr for checking this over for me and for giving me feedback!

*1 week before Clone Fest*

Frigid wind blew trash against the window of Fung's Diner while Sarah and Art met for their weekly lunch. Art had started giving her little mental challenges, based on past cases of his, and sometimes she enjoyed it, but today she just shook her head.

“Okay,” he said, “you gotta tell me what's on your mind, then.”

She pushed her eyebrows up with her fingers and tried to avoid the quasi-command for a minute or so before giving in. “Mostly just the usual bullshit. And Alison wants me to help plan this Clone Fest thing she's got coming up.”

“Clone Fest?!”

“Yeah. It's like, to celebrate all of our birthdays, or whatever, sort of between all the actual birthdays. It's next week.”

“Oh, that'll be nice. Yeah, Beth's birthday is... was right around this time, now that I think about it.” He chuckled, but shook his head. “April Fools Day. We used to laugh about that.”

She put her hand on his forearm. “Hey. It's still her birthday, right? And we're gonna try to do something to celebrate her, something special just for her, plus the party for all the rest of us weirdos. The party's the bitch, though. It's just...” She put the heels of both hands to her forehead, a gesture she'd picked up from Cosima some time ago, and shook her head. “It's just I have no idea what do.”

“What do you mean?”

“For, like, activities and shit. Alison wants to me to come up with 'fun activities' for everyone, and all I can think of doing is going to a club and getting drunk and high and shitfaced in every possible way until you can't remember who you even are any more. That's been just about every birthday party I've ever been to. Well, birthday party for adults, that is. Been going to more kids' parties these days, haven't I?”

Art smiled. “I dunno, Gemma's indoor pool party a couple months ago sounded like a blast. Maybe that's just more my speed these days.”

She took a bite of her BLT and considered that. “Okay, so we can get shitfaced at an indoor pool instead.”

He got that serious look on his face again. “No. Please don't. Sarah...”

“Hey, glow sticks look pretty cool underwater, you gotta admit.”

“Who else is gonna be there, other than the sisters?”

“Fucking, like, everybody, I guess? Cos and Delphine are flying in from wherever the fuck they are, and Scott's taking time off work to be there. Alison and Donnie and Helena, of course. Fe, naturally. You, hopefully. Not the kids, though. Alison's found a sitter to watch them for the evening.”

“What about Colin?”

She rolled her eyes and ate more of her sandwich.

“Uh oh.”

“If you really wanna know, ask Fe. There's some drama, but he's not telling me about it.”

“Well, even if he does come, I don't think he's got a lot of lifeguarding experience, so it answers my real question either way – who's gonna save your ass when one of you falls into the deep end tripping balls so hard you think that you actually fell _up_?”

“Cosima said she was a lifeguard in college.”

“In college.” When Sarah gave him a _So What_ look, he clarified, “That means more than 10 years ago, and I'm guessing she hasn't been keeping her license up-to-date.”

When she didn't respond right away, he ate quietly and watched people ducking their heads against the wind outside. She knew what he was thinking, and she wanted to slap him for it.

“Look, we can enjoy ourselves for one bloody night, okay?”

“I'm not saying you can't.”

“You're doing everything but.” She stole one of the olives from his salad and mentally dared his forehead furrows to deepen. “Cosima and Delphine have been off saving our sisters' lives in, like, the shittiest places on the planet, so the least we can do is have a decent party for them. And for me and Alison and Helena, too, of course, 'cause our lives haven't been total picnics, but mostly for them.”

“That's funny,” he said, “I got a postcard from them with a picture of a _real_ fancy resort on it. Said they were having a blast.”

“Yeah, I got that one, too, about a week after one that showed the earth splitting open and spewing fire. They move around a lot, yeah? Point is, it's everyone's birthday celebration, including Cosima's, and hell, including mine! You're not supposed to be responsible at a birthday party, Art!”

He made his “okey-dokey-then” face and cleaned the salad dressing from his chin. “Just don't count on me being there if there's anything other than alcohol involved. And I mean _anything_.”

** The morning of Clone Fest **

Cosima and Delphine both woke early, their bodies still wired to Middle East time. The weather report showed unseasonably warm temperatures, with highs around 18C and clear skies. After checking the weather report, Cosima dropped the phone next to her pillow and contemplated the day ahead. They were having lunch at Sarah's, followed by relaxed family time and then “something super fun” that evening.

“We should go to the market,” Delphine said, rolling over so that her nose almost touched Cosima's cheek. “The one in the park, you know? With all the sellers with vegetables and fruits. I know they might not have much this time of year, but someone will have eggs, I think.”

The mental image of Delphine casually perusing market stalls, in, like, a straw hat and a peasant skirt and carrying a straw basket made Cosima grin. “You wanna go to the farmer's market to get eggs?”

“Yes.” She kissed Cosima's chin and angled her torso above hers. “And anything else that looks good.”

She played with Delphine's fingers, splayed out next to her face, and smiled. “Can I get you, then?”

“Mmmm.... maybe.” There was another kiss, and Delphine threw back the covers, making Cosima yelp. “We'll see.” And with a smile, she sauntered off to the bathroom while Cosima scrambled to cover herself back up.

It was still chilly when they left at 7:30 in hats and scarves, but the sunlight kissing the buildings and the edges of the still-bare branches hinted at the warmer temperatures ahead. Cosima would have sucked up the chill and walked, but a city bus lumbered up as they neared a stop, so they got on and rode the mile or so to the park, where the market atmosphere was in full swing. At the entrance, they got coffee and home-baked muffins from a stall supporting the local children's orchestra, while a bluegrass duo played guitar and fiddle.

“Hang on,” Cosima said as they passed. “Are they playing Wagon Wheel?”

“What?”

She listened more closely, picking through years of memories for the tune. Then the fiddle picked up again, sawing at the chords, and she nodded. “Yup. It's definitely Wagon Wheel. Haven't heard this song since... well, let's just say it's been a while. Only words I remember is where they sing about having a nice long toke.”

“Ah. That's why you remember it. Maybe you can play it for me sometime.”

“Maybe.” She rubbed her shoulder against Delphine's as they made their way through the already crowded pathways between stalls. The muffin was good, if a little light on the blueberries, and the coffee warmed her hands and insides. “If you come out to California with me, I'm sure one of my uncles or cousins will play it on the guitar and we'll all sing along while we're drunk or high. Or both.”

They ducked into a stall selling leafy greens and inspected the wares, and Delphine asked, “If? Is it in question whether I'll go to California with you some day?”

Cosima balanced her half-eaten muffin on her coffee lid and set them on the counter. “No. I hope not.”

“Then why _if_?”

“I dunno...” She bagged a few handfuls of mesclun greens, tied the bags, and did the same with some kale. “It just doesn't seem that, like, certain, I guess.” _Way to be articulate, Niehaus,_ she thought. The funk she'd been in a few days prior had dissipated with the family meals and the vigorous fuckings, but now it lurked at the edge of her mind again.

“No?”

And then Delphine was rubbing her back, and it was almost okay, but a young woman nearby scolded her child in Arabic, and Cosima remembered they were going to Baghdad in three days.

“It's fine.” She tilted her head to kiss Delphine, and turned back to the counter to pay for the greens.

They took their time exploring the market, sampling mushrooms and honey and pickled everything, and also buying three dozen eggs, a log of goat cheese, a pack of crème fraîche, fresh dill from the same greenhouse the leafy greens came from, carrots, chopped walnuts, and various snacks to take along. By the time they reached the end of the line of stalls and sat down to snack, the sun had risen and they needed to remove their hats and scarves.

Looking out at the park stretched out in front of them, distant high-rises visible over the treetops, Cosima rested her head on Delphine's shoulder. “It's a nice place.”

“Mhm,” Delphine agreed around a mouthful of apricot.

“D'you remember that day we were gonna have a picnic out here...”

“The day it rained?”

“No, the other time.”

“The day you were pissed at me?”

“Was it... wait. Which day that I was pissed at you?” Cosima paused and thought back. She'd been thinking of the plans they'd made, to bring blankets and some hot spiced wine out here, to listen to the drummers and snuggle up together in public. And then they hadn't done that, because...

“You don't remember? The day you learned that that dental pulp came from Kira's tooth.”

“Was that the same day? Maybe. I remember them as two completely separate events.”

“It was the same day. I'd already set my schedule to leave early, but then you overheard me talking to Scott, and...”

“And the rest is history.”

People with dogs and baby strollers passed, less densely here than at other parts. A distant off-key trumpet player honked out “When the Saints Come Marching In,” and the combined smells of grilled meat, popcorn, and weed made the park smell like a fairground.

“We could get married here.”

Delphine had her coffee cup halfway to her mouth, but she set it down again at that. “As a replacement picnic, perhaps?”

“If you wanna think of it that way. We did tell everyone we'd get married in Toronto, didn't we?”

“Yes, we did. I don't think either of us will want to jaunt off anywhere for a destination wedding.”

Cosima's laugh slid into a groan, and she covered her eyes. “I am trying so hard not to think about jaunting off anywhere right now. Today was supposed to be my day off from jaunting.”

“Ooh, pauvre petit chiot...” Delphine rubbed her shoulder and nuzzled her hair. “I'm sorry that I brought it up.”

“Eh, it's whatever. What do you think, though? Of getting married here? We don't need to decide right now, obviously.”

“Obviously. I think it's nice, as long as it doesn't rain.”

“We can have a backup for rain.”

Delphine giggled. “Like one of those giant circus tents?”

“Exactly like one of those. Oh, and there could be streamers that are, like, DNA-shaped coming down from the top.”

“Mmm, maybe. What else would there be?”

“DNA symbols on the cake, obviously.”

“A DNA cake, maybe?”

“Oooh, that's a good idea.”

They finished off their snacks, and just as they were about to rise, a loud _boBOOP_ emanated from Delphine's purse, making them both pause. While Delphine fished around for the clone business phone, it gave off two more _boBOOPs_ in rapid succession, and Cosima's heart picked up its pace. Maybe it was Özlem, and Cosima's suspicions about the coughing were correct. Or maybe it was someone with some information about Malika, finally. Or maybe it was just some doctor, confirming an appointment in Baghdad or Tehran or wherever.

Delphine unlocked the screen and frowned, then smiled. “Look.”

Leaning over, Cosima saw a picture, likely taken by a webcam, of three children – Fatima, Nabil, and Mohammed Al Numery, the oldest of the Yemeni orphans they'd met in Djibouti. In the picture, only Fatima looked directly at the camera, large dark eyes serious under her headscarf while the boys poked each other from each side of her. With a swipe, Delphine revealed the second photo. The boys smiled here, but Fatima did not. 

“They are such good kids,” Cosima said. 

“They sent a message, too.” 

_hello dr delphine cormier_ it began. _we are nabl Fatima and Mhmmd in DJIBOUTI CITY DJIBOUTI_  
please you help aunt  
nooran  
sister  
we say hello  
ehllo  


“Oh my god that is so cute.” Cosima wondered if they'd sent it from one of the internet cafés in the city, or if they'd made a friend with a laptop. She wondered if Nooran had told them how much she wanted Cosima and Delphine to take the children away with them. 

“We should write back,” Delphine said. “But with what?”

Cosima took the phone from her and turned it to landscape position. “Easy. Smile.” 

*

They strolled down a residential street on their way back from the market, Cosima's arm around Delphine's waist and Delphine's arm around Cosima's shoulders, each of them with bags of goodies slung over their shoulders.

Several blocks away from the park, in an upscale but cozy neighborhood, they saw a house with at least ten balloons dancing in the wind around a multicolored OPEN HOUSE sign. A woman in a burgundy pant suit waved as they approached. “Open house today, ladies! Wanna come take a look around?”

“Eh...” said Delphine, but Cosima stopped and looked up at it. She was fuzzy on architectural terms, but she put the facade around early 1900s, with dark stately brick and those bump-out windows that give the inhabitants a nice cross breeze in the summer. It was three stories, including an English basement, and there was a tiny garden out front with some brave little daffodils poking up.

“We're not in the market, actually,” Delphine said.

“Oh, that's fine!” the agent assured them. “You can still come in and take a look around, get some ideas for when you are in the market one day. Are you two from around here?”

They exchanged a glance. “Not exactly,” Cosima said.

“Well, I see you've done some shopping! We do have a really nice kitchen inside, I have to say. Newly renovated! Come on in! There's free coffee!”

It was such a tacky sales pitch, but another couple walked out of the house and gave them a view of a spacious entry way past a practical mudroom with rain boots set up as props. She looked up at Delphine. “What d'you think, babe? Take a look around real quick, grab some free coffee? It'll give us a chance to put these bags down for a minute.”

Delphine arched her eyebrows and looked down at her with those caramel brown eyes, and Cosima knew it wasn't practical, and that Delphine thought she was being silly, but she didn't care.

“Please?”

“Alright. If you really want to.”

The inside of the house was furnished by the real estate agency in a way that blended Rachel Duncan and Alison Hendrix, but the agent had been right about the kitchen – it was fantastic, although Cosima had to admit that her standards for kitchens had always been pretty low. There was an island with a granite countertop, plenty of cabinet space, and a gas stove. It was easy to imagine having the nieces and nephews over for a weekend and making pancakes for them in this kitchen, or cooking up a romantic dinner with Delphine on a Friday night. A window over the sink and a half-glass door beside the cabinets looked out on a spacious fenced-in backyard where two black-haired little girls ran around with balloons. Cosima thought of the pictures they'd just seen, and imagined Fatima finally being able to relax and run around with her siblings in a yard like this.

“You guys been upstairs yet?”

Cosima turned to see a paunchy man in khakis addressing her and Delphine. “Uh, no,” she said.

“You should check out the balcony. That about sold this place for me, honestly.”

Cosima wasn't sure what to say to that, but Delphine suggested that he put an offer on the house if he liked it so much, and the woman he was with groaned. That set off an argument between the two of them, and Cosima and Delphine scooted away up the stairs.

Upstairs, Delphine wandered into the smaller hall bathroom while Cosima explored the master bedroom. She could see what the guy downstairs had meant. French doors opened onto a balcony large enough to comfortably host ten people. She walked out, ran her fingers over the stained wooden railing, and then rested her forearms on it to look out on the backyard.

The realtor wasn't lying when she said “great backyard,” either. If anything, it was an understatement; the yard was easily three or four times the size of the Hendrix's backyard. The realtor's voice drifted up from below. “Oh, there's definitely room for a swing set! Swing set, sandbox, fire pit, you name it!”

There were maple trees out there, too, with tiny buds giving them a fuzzy appearance. They were just about large enough to string a hammock up between them, but if that didn't work, they could always put a bench beneath them, and sit out in the shade on warm days. They could have cook-outs with the family, or just sit out there together with drinks, just the two of them. She could come home and find Delphine on that sofa downstairs, or in the kitchen making fancy cuisine look effortless. Sometimes she would get home first, and Delphine would come home from work to find Cosima making Kraft dinner or doing a smelly pet science project out on this balcony.

“Hey.” Delphine came up and rubbed her shoulders. “What are you thinking about?”

She smiled over at her, loving the sight of Delphine on this balcony, in her comfy sweater and multi-pocket pants. “Just stupid shit.”

“Ah.” Delphine watched her for a moment. “We can't buy it. You know that.”

 _Fucking hell..._ Cosima laughed. “I know that!”

“Okay, just checking. You have that far away look on your face, though.”

“I do not.”

“You most definitely do.” Delphine scooted over to tuck herself beside Cosima, and nuzzled the top of her head. “One more year, if that, chérie, and then we can stay. Not in this house, of course! But we can stay here. Or wherever you want. Back in Minnesota, or California, wherever.”

“I know.”

“We really should be going, though. People are waiting for us, and we have perishables.”

Cosima giggled. “Yeah. Maybe I just like hearing you say _perishables_.”

On the way to Sarah's house, they passed hundred-year-old maples and oak trees in yards and parks, brown front lawns that would turn verdant in a few months, and all manner of people getting an early start on their weekend. At one corner house, while Cosima and Delphine waited for the light to let them cross, a man and woman looked up at the roof of their house. 

“Earliest the contractors can come out is next week,” the woman told the man. 

They didn't stay at the corner long enough to find out what the contractors would be coming out for, but all Cosima could think of was _We're not even going to be on this continent next week._

She didn't even want a house. They were too much work, with the lawn upkeep and the plumbing and the pest control and making sure the roof didn't cave in. Her parents always said their boat was easier to maintain than any of their houses had been. She didn't want a house. 

Once Sarah's house was in view, Cosima's steps slowed. Her sisters were there, and her niece, and she felt as comfortable there as anywhere else, but it wasn't home. 

“You okay?” Delphine asked.

And Delphine was several feet in front of her, checking on her, making sure she was okay, knowing her moods before Cosima herself knew them. 

“Yeah,” she said, jaunting across the short distance to kiss her lips. “I'm okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the children's last name, I borrowed from Reem Al Numery, who won the International Women of Courage Award. You can a little about her here: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1984949_1985230,00.html


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It might be clear already, but it's worth mentioning that, in this series, Cosima is no longer vegan. That doesn't mean she won't be again someday, but for now, in this story, she's not.

No matter how much time she spent with Charlotte, no matter how recent that time had been, every time Delphine saw her, she thought of the night she first saw her – bundled from head to toe, wrapped in Cosima's hypothermic arms. Her face was much the same for each new interaction with Delphine as it had been then, skeptical, closed off, wary. Delphine was never sure how much of it was an act, and how much a genuine defense mechanism.

“Bonjour,” Charlotte said. 

Well. Maybe it was just her resting face.

“Bonjour!” Delphine replied. “Ça va?”

Charlotte nodded but gave no reply, instead limping across the room with her bearded dragon perched on her right shoulder and kittens frolicking around her feet. She'd been studying French for a few years, Delphine knew, but only for the past several months had those studies taken place in a classroom with multiple students. That “Bonjour” a moment ago was the first French word Delphine ever heard Charlotte speak. “I thought Cosima was coming with you,” Charlotte said. 

“Yes, she needed to use the bathroom, so - ” She pointed upstairs to indicate where Cosima was at the moment. 

“Oh.” Charlotte looked down at the bags they'd brought in, and her resting wary face opened up. It might've been Delphine's imagination, but it seemed that the bearded dragon perked up, too. “Are we going to use all of that? That's a lot of eggs.”

Before Delphine answered, Sarah thumped down the stairs just behind Kira, who treated Delphine like she'd been there for Kira's entire life. “Did you get any chocolate?” Kira demanded.

“Oi, say hello first,” Sarah said. As Kira mumbled a quick hello, Sarah faced Delphine and said, “Took you long enough. I thought you'd be here an hour ago. Where's Cosima?”

“She's using the bathroom,” Charlotte said. To Delphine, she said, “You didn't answer my question. Are we going to use all of those eggs?”

The varying pulls on her attention raised Delphine's anxiety, and there were still two other adults in the house. “We might,” she told Charlotte. To Kira, she said, “and no, we didn't get any chocolate.”

“Can we throw them at people?” Kira asked, hoisting one of the egg cartons in one hand.

Delphine and Sarah spoke in unison. “No.” 

Kira pouted and slumped onto the couch with her phone. In a few seconds, various bloops, bings, and plops emanated from the device, and Kira's eyes and fingers darted around the screen while the rest of her body remained perfectly still. A dozen academic articles popped into Delphine's mind, all proclaiming the dangers of too much screen time for developing brains and eyes, but Sarah let it slide, so Delphine followed suit. 

Cosima bounded down the stairs with her hands flapping beside her. To Delphine's arched eyebrow, she said, “The towels are damp. FYI.”

Sarah gave her unresponsive daughter a kiss on the head, hugged Charlotte, and then threw on her jacket. “Yeah, we don't quite have room service here like you two are used to. You a'right otherwise?”

Delphine looked over at Kira on the couch, and at Charlotte in the kitchen feeding a piece of apricot to her bearded dragon. “Euh, yes, I think so. We'll call you if we need anything.”

Sarah was halfway out the door before Delphine's comment registered, and she turned around. “Uh, you can do that, but I can't promise I'll answer. The girls know where everything is, and emergency numbers are on the fridge. Oh, and Art said he'll be here at seven.”

“Sounds good to me,” Cosima said. “Have fun, okay? You deserve a little time to yourself. See you later.”

After Sarah left, Delphine's first instruction was for the girls to wash their hands, but when Charlotte's bearded dragon stepped down Charlotte's arm towards the counter, Delphine stopped her. “Could you put... euh, what's its name, again?”

“Saphira. She's a girl.”

“I think Saphira should go back into her cage right now.”

Charlotte leaned against the counter and fixed Delphine with a small-mouthed stare. “She likes being on my shoulder.”

“I'm sure she does, but I don't want her getting into our food.”

“She's allowed to have human food sometimes, like fruits and vegetables. It says so in the book of bearded dragon care.”

Delphine looked around for some backup from Cosima, but Cosima was trying to pull Kira away from her phone, and both of them were giggling. “Charlotte,” Delphine said, “please put Saphira back in her cage. I don't want her roaming free while we're preparing food. It's not sanitary.”

Charlotte jutted her chin out to one side like Cosima and Sarah both did when they dug in their heels and gripped the counter top like she expected Delphine to physically pull her away, so she needed to brace herself. Before Delphine could ask again, or explain her request further, Cosima steered Kira into the kitchen. 

“Yo, Charlotte,” Cosima said, “you should probably put Saphira back in her little house before we start in with the food, okay?”

Charlotte sighed and dropped her shoulders. She didn't reply, but limped away, up the stairs to her room, and for just a moment, Delphine hated both clones equally. 

They spent the rest of the morning in the kitchen, more or less following Delphine's written and spoken instructions for deviled eggs ( _oeufs à la diable_ to Delphine and Charlotte) and carrot cake with crème fraîche frosting. Delphine had cooked with the girls before, during their Christmas holidays and with Alison's participation, but she had never cooked with Cosima before. She'd assumed going in that cooking with Cosima would be like running a science experiment with her – Cosima would be diligent, methodical, and professional despite frequent bad jokes and pop culture references. 

None of that was the case now. 

Cosima was not concerned at all about the specifics of their recipes. Instead of weighing and sifting the flour and sugar, she directed Charlotte to simply dump the dry ingredients into a bowl after leveling off the measuring cup with her finger (of all things), and then she showed Charlotte how to blend the wet and dry with her bare hands. The girls, at least, found it delightful. When they tried doing that with the deviled eggs filling, though, Delphine put her foot down. 

“Use a spoon, Chérie, please.” The cake batter was at least cooked after mixing. The eggs were not. 

They smeared caked batter on each other. Cosima, Kira, and Charlotte all dabbed or wiped globs of the ochre gloop on each other's faces, necks, and arms, and while they exclaimed some version of “Oh no, you don't!” they all laughed together. When Kira lunged at Delphine with a handful of mayonnaise, though, Cosima grabbed Kira by the waist and spun her around to face the other way. 

“Nuh uh. Nobody puts food on Delphine but me.” 

In fact, the one time they'd tried using chocolate syrup with sex, the stickiness put them both off of doing it ever again, but the children didn't need to know that. Delphine kissed Cosima's sticky cheek while Charlotte fended off Kira's mayonnaise attack with a wooden spoon. “Thank you, mon amour. And please tell me that all of you are taking showers after this?”

“Oh, yeah. The girls can shower before Art gets here, and then I'll clean up real quick at the Rabbit Hole before the party. We've got time.”

And Kira talked the entire time. She talked about her school, her classmates, her teacher, and everyone in the neighborhood. She talked about Minecraft, Minecraft videos, and the children's hockey league she had recently joined. She talked about her mother, her late grandmother, her father, and all of her genetically identical aunties. She talked about her Uncle Felix and how he and Colin were having a bit of a rough patch right now because Colin wanted them to be exclusive and Felix was having a hard time with that. 

“What's it mean to be exclusive, anyway?” she asked. 

Delphine was washing out the mixing bowl they'd used for the cake batter, and exchanged a look with Cosima. 

“It means you only date one person,” Cosima said. “One person at a time.”

“I thought that's what dating _was_ ,” Charlotte said. “Like, when people are dating, that means they don't kiss anyone else or whatever.”

Cosima's face was much calmer that Delphine felt, but Cosima still took a moment to answer, making a show of checking on the cake in the oven. “That is sometimes what it means. But sometimes people have open relationships, where they're allowed to kiss other people. Or whatever.”

“But then they're not dating,” Charlotte insisted. “They're...” She waved her hands around in a way reminiscent of Alison Hendrix. “They're doing something else.”

For the first time since they'd all gathered together in the kitchen, both girls' attention was fully on Cosima and Delphine. 

“An open relationship means that two people love each other,” Cosima said, “and they put each other first, but they're allowed to... see other people on the side. They just need to communicate really well so no one's feelings get hurt.”

“Does that mean they have sex with other people?” Charlotte asked.

“Sometimes,” Cosima said. “But only if their partner is okay with it. Communication's the most important thing. And consent, of course. But that's true for any relationship, really.”

The girls thought that over. Charlotte had her serious face on again, and she watched Cosima and Delphine more closely, like she was putting their relationship into the context of what Cosima had just said. Delphine was on the verge of clarifying and she and Cosima did NOT have an open relationship, by mutual agreement, but Kira changed the subject to a story about a recent afternoon she'd spent with the Hendrixes. Delphine took a deep breath and went back to washing up, tuning Kira out for several minutes and letting Cosima do all the little “uh huh” noises. When Delphine tuned back in, Cosima had her hand on her hip and her eyes were narrowed.

“Oscar tried telling us we couldn't be there,” Kira was saying, “`cause him and his friends were gonna build a fort or whatever. Like, their yard isn't even big enough for a stupid fort! But then Gemma said that he used to wet the bed until he was, like, ten, and then he got really mad.” 

Charlotte giggled at the story, but neither of the adults did. 

“That doesn't sound very nice,” Delphine offered.

“We were allowed to be there!” Kira said. “He didn't, like, reserve it, or anything.”

Cosima adjusted her glasses. “Yeah, but there were better ways to handle that than embarrass him in front of his friends like that.”

“Well, maybe he shouldn't have told us to leave! He was being rude first.”

“That's not the point, and that's not really how people work,” Cosima said. “Just because someone else is mean to you, that doesn't give you the right to be mean back at them.” She tapped Charlotte's shoulder. “You and I have talked about that before a couple times.”

By the time the kitchen was cleaned up, with Cosima's insistence that the girls helped, the cake was out to cool and the eggs covered and stored in the fridge, Delphine was swaying on her feet. The girls went off to shower without encouragement, and Cosima rested her hands on Delphine's waist. “You might need a nap. I think the kids took it out of you.”

“A nap sounds good.”

The master bedroom, the best room to nap in at the moment, was remarkably tidy for what Delphine had come to expect from Sarah. Hell, it was cleaner than Cosima's living spaces were once Cosima spent more than a few days in them. The queen sized bed in the middle of the room was made, if not neatly, and the floor was clear. Books and papers littered the desk by the window, but it was clearly used as a desk rather than as storage. Delphine flopped on top of the bed, on the fleece blanket rather than under it. She was asleep in minutes.

_  
Cool Mediterranean breezes blew sand all around her as she waited at the light rail terminal. No one else on the platform seemed to mind. In fact, the sand didn't even touch them._

_They jostled onto the train, speaking in tongues and smelling of stomach acid. The train hit bumps on the track that no one else noticed. Only Delphine lost her footing and needed to grab at the back of someone's seat to stay upright. Then the train sped up onto a raised track overlooking the city. The view was beautiful, but no one else looked at it. At the next curve, the train hit a gap in the rails and bounced everyone up in the air...  
_

“Oh, sorry, Delphine!” 

Delphine panted, face up in the bed, clutching the blanket beneath her. No one else was in the room with her, but the bedroom door was open, and water was running. No. Not water. Someone was peeing. The air was cool with a hint of pine scent, and the pillow was wet right next to her head. By the time the toilet flushed, the sink ran, and the master bathroom door opened, Delphine's breathing and heart rate were almost normal again, but nothing else made sense. 

“Sorry,” Kira repeated. “I forgot you were here, and I really had to use the bathroom.”

“Nnnh,” was all Delphine could manage, and then Kira was gone again. 

Through the open door, Cosima's voice called out, “Okay, this time try to get it in without touching the edge, okay?”

Delphine propped herself up on one elbow and rubbed her face. The curtains were closed, but sunlight winked through the cracks. Her phone was nowhere, and there was no other clock in the room. She stumbled into the bathroom, awake enough to lock the door behind her in case anyone else forgot she was there, and took in the varied marker graffiti that edged the bathroom mirror. Some of the words (like _pay taxes,_ , Kira dentist, and in prime place at the top of the mirror, _BOLLOCKS_ ) were clearly Sarah's, but others ( _I <3 kittens_ and _Boys are dumb_ ) were scrawled in childish writing, along with various flowers, mushrooms, and cat faces. Cosima's bathroom mirror back in Minnesota had had a similar ascetic, albeit with different messages. 

She found the girls in Charlotte's bedroom, surrounded by scraps of fabric, string, ribbon, stickers, tape, and markers. A carton with five remaining eggs sat open on Charlotte's desk. Cosima joined them a moment later with a box of bendy straws, some broken-down cardboard boxes, and a pair of scissors. At least it wasn't a box cutter or a blow torch.

“Oh, hey, sleepy head!” Cosima grinned at her and pecked her cheek on her way into the room. “How'd you sleep?”

“Euh, well, I think.” 

“We're doing science class!” Kira said. 

“With crafts,” Charlotte added. “So it's like science art.”

Delphine ran her fingers through her hair and took in the mess. “It looks like fun. What are you doing, exactly?”

The girls looked to Cosima, but she gestured for them to answer. “We're dropping eggs out of the window,” Charlotte said. 

“But we're not allowed to break them!” Kira added. “And now we have to get them to land in that tub down there, but without hitting the sides. Cosima keeps making it harder.”

Kira was not the first person to make _that_ claim, and Cosima knew it, because she gave Delphine a pointy smile. “You wanna try?”

“Okay.” She sat on the edge of the bed and sorted through the supplies, not awake enough yet to form a plan. An egg appeared beside her, accompanied by another kiss on the cheek. “How many have you broken so far?” she asked. “These were $6 a dozen.”

Cosima sat beside her, careful not to upset the egg, and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Not very many. The girls have some pretty good designs so far, so most drops have been successful. It is no more or less wasteful than make two dozen deviled eggs that might not all get eaten.”

As she spoke, Charlotte tucked an egg into a little basket with a plaid parachute, leaned out the window, and dropped it. A few seconds later, she cried, “Oh no! It's in the neighbor's yard!”

“Well, sounds like you have to go get it, then.”

“Can't we just let them keep it?”

“Uh, no. That's called littering. Go on, we'll still be here when you get back.”

Delphine picked up her egg and considered it. It could have been an omelette, an oeuf à la diable, or part of a cake. Some countries would have pickled it and eaten it that way. Instead, it would be cloaked in cardboard, fabric scraps, and plastic, decorated with markers, and dropped out a residential window into a tub of dirty water. And considering Delphine's experience with this activity, the egg was just as likely to simply smash open on the ground, feeding invertebrates instead of people. Delphine picked up a Sharpie and drew a sad face on the shell.

Dropping eggs from Charlotte's window for another hour, as Cosima put more constraints on the girls' projects like size and material requirements, and the girls seemed halfway to jobs with an aeronautics firm. Delphine's own eggs did better than she expected, although the girls were divided in how many points to give her for style. 

“They're sleek,” Charlotte asserted. “Missiles don't have frilly ribbons on them, so Delphine's eggs don't have to, either.”

“But they're not missiles!” Kira argued. “Eggs need to have some fashion sense when they go down.”

Delphine leaned against Charlotte's desk and took in the feedback. To Cosima, she remarked, “You know, I keep thinking we're talking about different kinds of eggs entirely.”

Cosima giggled. “Me too, sometimes. It's true, though. Your eggs don't have to have frilly ribbons if you don't want them.” 

* * *  
* * *

After handing the girls off to Art at 7, going to the Rabbit Hole just long to clean up and grab presents for the sisters, then they were off again, in another Lyft car, to the address Alison sent that morning.

The resort overlooking Lake Ontario was reminiscent of their hotel in Muscat, except that here the temperature was in the 60s and the ethnic blend of patrons and employees was a bit more mixed. Clone Club had an entire spacious wing of the property to themselves for the night, including an indoor and outdoor bar, heated pool and heaters outside under a partial roof, and table and pub games inside. There was also a kitchenette tucked in behind the games area, where Alison puttered away. When Cosima and Delphine arrived, the rest of Clone Club was already there, many of them in some kind of swimwear. Helena was the only one not prepared to swim. She stood in a sweater and baggy jeans, watching Scott and Sarah play foosball and eating from a heaping paper plate.

Adele intercepted them just as Cosima handed off the carrot cake and eggs to Donnie at the food table. “Oh hey y'all! Welcome back to civilization and all that shit.” Despite the multiple sources of alcohol present, Adele did not have a drink in her hand. Yet.

Delphine returned Adele's hug. “Did you just arrive?”

“Oh, yeah. Flew in this morning. Last minute. Felix only just told me a few days ago that you were having this little shindig, and you know I can't turn down a good party. Besides, I missed everybody.” She looked over at the food they’d brought in as Donnie set it on the table. “Delphine, honey, if you made that, I'mma have to get me some. That looks too good.”

Delphine would have been flattered, but she could serve Adele a plate of week-old carrot shavings with a dusty radish on top and Adele would gush about “French haute cuisine,” and pronounce it _“hoat kwezeen.”_

“The girls helped,” she told her.

“Oh, well, that's another reason to try it. I have to tell them what a good job they did.” She waved to Cosima. “Happy late birthday, by the way. You and half the people here. Well, I guess some are early birthdays. Whatever. Twenty-one's the last birthday anyone really cares about, isn't it?”

“Euh...”

“Anyway, Felix'll be here in a minute. He had to run back out to the car for something. Oh, shit, hang on.” She rushed over to Alison in the kitchenette, who was balancing a few trays in her hands. 

“Can I offer you ladies something to eat?” Donnie Hendrix wore blue swimming trunks and flip flops with a hooded sweatshirt, and his hands were clasped in front of him like any good customer servant. The poor man had probably had to serve guests at his own wedding, too.

“Um, sure,” Cosima said. “I see Helena's already been at the buffet.”

Donnie chuckled and handed them each a paper plate as he moved around to the other side of the table. “Helena's been to every buffet in Ontario, I believe. She makes them reconsider their pricing policies.” He picked up some tongs and clicked them a few times. “What can I get you?”

Nothing on the table would have prevented Cosima and Delphine from helping themselves, but Donnie seemed to enjoy his role as host, so they let him load up a single plate to share with bruschetta, mozzarella with basil, sliced vegetables, and cucumber sandwiches, some of the deviled eggs they'd brought, and a slice of carrot cake. Then they sat quietly together on a waterproof sofa under an outdoor heater, nibbling on the healthier foods first. All of it was good, almost certainly made by Alison, but like most food they'd had in the past few days, it had a certain blandness after two months of Middle Eastern and African dishes.

“Hello Sestra.” Helena slid herself into a cross-legged position on the floor in front of them, her plate freshly piled with carrot cake, eggs, and various brownies, just as Cosima and Delphine's plate was almost empty. “Much birthday happiness, yes?”

“Oh, yeah,” Cosima said. “Happy birthday to you, too, bub. Cheers.”

Helena giggled as they clinked their drinks together, but then she sat up straight to look at Cosima's. “You have only water tonight, sestra? Why not something better?”

“I don't drink if I'm swimming. Personal rule.”

Helena made a face at that but did not argue. “No drink, okay, but food, yes? You need more food, with all of the traveling around the world. You cannot save our sestras if you are hungry.” She transferred a piece of carrot cake, two brownies, and two eggs from her plate to theirs and gestured for them to eat it.

If Delphine ate as much as Helena wanted her too, she would most certainly not be as trim and fit as Helena managed to be. Not for the first time, Delphine wondered at the levels of malnourishment Helena must have experienced growing up that prohibited her from putting on more weight as an adult. She'd met enough clones by now to know that svelte wasn't necessarily genetic. Cosima was eating more carrot cake, though, and Helena was telling them to tell the girls how good it was, so Delphine went along. She'd had enough carrot cake already to last a week, though, so she took a brownie instead. It was delicious, heavily dotted with butterscotch chips, and she ate all of it before Cosima even picked at hers, but all the brownies lack Alison's tell-tale sharpness. In other words, it looked like a human made it, rather a team of cake robots.

“Who made these?” she asked Helena, as Cosima broke a corner off the other brownie, sans butterscotch, for herself.

“Brother-Sestra Felix made them. He said they are all special.”

At the same moment, Cosima swallowed her brownie piece and made one of the most interesting faces Delphine had ever seen. “Holy shit. That is very special. Um, babe? How much of that did you eat?”

“I ate the whole thing, why?”

“Oh, shit.” And now Cosima was laughing and waving at Felix, who stood in Donnie's place at the food table. “Felix! Did you seriously bring space brownies, man?”

He sashayed over in form-fitting shorts and a T-shirt with a rainbow dinosaur on it. “Yeah, why? D'you want some?” Looking down at Cosima, Delphine, and Helena, and at their plates, his face and posture drew together and pulled back. “A bit late for me to offer, though, I see. Shit. How'd you get some? I only just brought them in from outside.”

Cosima and Delphine looked to Helena, whose mouth was chipmunk-full. “Sorry,” she managed.

“How many did _you_ eat?” Cosima asked her.

Helena shrugged.

Delphine looked down at the crumbs on her fingers. “Let me guess. Cannabis?”

“You could say that,” Felix said.

“Even the butterscotch ones?”

He nodded and Cosima put a hand to her own forehead. “And you haven't had any in a while, so...”

Felix draped his hand over Delphine's shoulder. “So you're about to have quite the interesting evening, I'd say. Stick to the short end of the pool if you get in, yeah?”

*

“I don't feel any different, I swear. And the water is wonderfully warm. You should come sit with me.”

Cosima crouched down beside her and brushed back the stray cluster of hair escaping Delphine's ponytail. “You're not feeling anything _yet,_ but you will. Edibles just take longer to kick in.”

“You had some, too.”

“I had, like, two bites, and I'm way more used to pot than you are. You had a whole fucking brownie, a big one at that, and you haven't been high since Rachel had both of her eyes.”

“That's not true.”

“Okay, when have you been high since then? Don't tell me you toked up with old PT on the island?”

Delphine splashed a handful of water up at her and got a satisfying yelp in return. “I have smoked with _you_ , mon amour, in the Rabbit Hole, before we left for Latin America.”

Cosima flicked Delphine's arm in retribution. “Smoked, my ass. I smoked, but you took, like, one drag and passed out.”

Delphine was not about to argue about that, and anyway it didn't change how she felt right now, which was full, content, loved, and a delightful mix of cool and warm at the same time. A hip-hop artist she didn't recognize played on the speakers and at the other end of the pool, Sarah, Alison, and Adele were doing something that looked vaguely like water aerobics but probably wasn't. Adele was starting to look an awful lot like a scarlet ibis when Cosima's phone rang.

“What the fuck?” Cosima muttered. They had their purses with them at all times out of habit, so Cosima could grab her phone before it stopped ringing. “Hello? Yes? Oh, hey, Gabriela! How's it going? Yeah, hang on, lemme go somewhere a little quieter.”

Gabriela. That could be anyone. She watched Cosima's shorts-clad ass hustle inside. It really was the cutest butt Delphine had ever seen.

When she turned back around, the chlorine vapors coming off the surface of the pool were green, reminding Delphine of nothing more than the absinthe fairy, and Adele had gone full scarlet ibis. _Absinthe_. Now that was something she hadn't had in looooong time. The last time had been, when? 2004? 2007? Too long ago, at any rate, and now here she was, sitting on the edge of a whole pool of it, it's little waves massaging her calves and the soles of her feet and singing a little song for her.

She slipped in, up to her ribs, and bounced. She bounced! It was the funniest thing she'd ever felt, so she bounced some more, up and down and side to side in the steamy green pool, laughing her head off and watching the stars dance around overhead to a mixed up mash of the hip-hop song playing and “Prét-à-Porter,” that song she'd listened to endlessly on the island because PT deigned that she could have a record player with one record and somehow or other she never hated it. Him, yes, but never the song.

And Sarah'd killed him with an O2 tank to the skull, and that's how she tried to remember him, but instead, the green water turned red and his gnarly fingers crept up her waist and she

did

not  
want

this.

“Oi, Delphine, you doing a'right over here?”

Cosima stood in front of her, but it wasn't Cosima. It was Not Cosima, with wet loose hair and a British accent. She'd said _oi_. The clones didn't say _oi_ unless they were Sarah. Delphine twisted her head side to side and confirmed that, indeed, this was Not Cosima, and Not Another Clone, but Sarah. Then she laughed at her own cleverness and slipped on the pool floor. “Quoi?”

“I said, are you doing alright? You seem a bit, uh...” Sarah moved her hands in a way Delphine didn't understand, and when she tried to follow them, the world tipped sideways, but everything was funny again so it was okay.

“A bit?” Delphine dropped her knees and floated with her chin just above the water so the vapors went up her nose.

“Oh shit, did you eat one of those brownies Fe brought in?”

“Mmmm...” Brownies would be perfect right now. With some of that frosting they'd made for the cake today. However. “You know what I really want?” Still floating, she put a hand on Sarah's shoulder, which was damp and covered in little goosebumps, but curved in a way Cosima's didn't, in a way Delphine had never noticed before.

Sarah giggled and looked around everywhere except Delphine. “If you say more brownies, you're not getting any.”

“No. No no no.” Delphine now had both hands on Sarah's shoulders. “A döner kebab. With extra sheep’s cheese, and... and and and and...” The English _and_ tripped over her tongue until it because a blur of “dudududududududu” and the only thing keeping her from slipping under the surface of the absinthe pool was Sarah's shoulders. Delphine dangled from her shoulders and bumped against Sarah's body, distracted by the scar behind Sarah's left ear.

“Okay, this won't work.” Sarah nudged her back up onto her feet and pried her hands away, but Delphine leaned in to point at the scar.

“I remember that. I stitched that.”

“Yes, you did. You were sober for that, thankfully. Come on, now, let's get you back up on this ledge before Cosima fuckin' murders me.”

“She won't. She loves you too much.”

Sarah's laugh had a strange tone to it then as she turned Delphine 180 degrees. “Not enough for all that. Come on, up you go. Outta the water.”

Now, though, the ledge of the pool was continents away, and despite soaking in absinthe, she still hadn't drunk any, so she cupped her hands and drank a few mouthfuls. “It doesn't taste like I remember it,” she told Sarah. “It tastes like... like grade school.”

“I... I don't even know what to say to that. Come on, sit up here.”

The ledge was rough, with pebbles and craters to dig into her skin, and it was moving, crumbling under her hands and sliding back and forth. Never mind the height. She couldn't possibly pull herself up there. “Non. Je ne peux pas.”

“That so?” Sarah turned and gestured into the distance. Her hair was wet, falling over her skin and leaving rivers of water that pulsed with her heartbeat. When she turned back to Delphine, she was smirking. Only then did Delphine have the fleeting thought – Sarah might not speak French.

“You have Cosima's eyes.”

And Sarah thought that was funny! She was laughing, so Delphine laughed along. “Do I really?” Sarah asked. “Isn't that something?”

A hand caressed the back of her neck, under her hair, and the pleasure was so strong she almost fell over.

“Hey, babe? You doing okay?”

Cosima's lips were the best of all the clones. They had so many different shapes and her bottom lip gave just the right amount of resistance between Delphine's teeth. When she tried to kiss her now, though, Cosima pulled away.

“You're feeling those brownies now, aren't you? Ho-ly shit.”

Sarah asked Cosima where she'd run off to, anyways, and Cosima said something about Puerto Rico and infertility and vaccines and uteruses, but she had the cutest little toes Delphine had ever seen, so Delphine didn't really catch most of what she said. She stroked each little Cosima toe individually, then ran her finger over the tops of all of Cosima's toes and kissed the top of her foot.

When she looked up, Cosima had that little sideways dimpled smile, and when she stroked Delphine's cheek, Delphine almost lost her legs again. “Let's get you out of the water, yeah?”

Delphine slid her hands up Cosima's calf and lost herself for a moment in the shape of her muscles. “Can I kiss you then?”

“You can kiss me all you want, just on dry land so no one drowns.”

A few moments and an eon later, she sat on the couch near one of the outdoor heaters, alone. The absinthe vapors flickered in the distance to the undulating beat of the music while the scarlet ibis flitted in and out of the water. Her heart beat to a different tempo, expanding until it filled her entire self, rubbing against the backs of her eyeballs and her nasal passages and worming its way into her pelvis and the soles of her feet. If she squinted, she saw her heart beat pushing out from her toenails. Then her heart contracted again, and her body shrank into itself, smaller and smaller until she imploded into her own navel like a Popple. Blood in, heart expansion, explosion. Blood away, heart contraction, Popple.

Repeat. And repeat.

“Drink this.”

She took the glass of water and drank it, gulping at first and then sipping to feel the drips and drizzles down her esophagus. Food stirred inside of her along with her blood and breath, food breaking down and turning into energy, each little molecule sucked into the lining of her stomach and intestines and moving along through her ever pumping blood stream to her brain, her liver, her muscles, her skin.

“We should do a study,” she told Cosima, “with brownies. To see how much of that brownie is in each skin cell.”

Cosima giggled. “Uh, somebody's probably already done that study.”

“We should do it again. For my skin cells, and those brownies over there.”

“You are not getting any more brownies.”

Music washed over her and burst in the air beside their heads. _Like a blaze of light, ready to ignite, we are made of dynamite_ “We are,” Delphine said, nuzzling the side of Cosima's neck.

“No,” Cosima said. “No more brownies.”

Delphine didn't know what she was talking about now, but Cosima smelled like cloves and oranges and her skin was warm and soft. She ran her tongue over Cosima's neck to her throat to nip her chin. The texture change from Cosima's shorts to the skin of her waist distracted her, though, and she pulled back to watch her own hand move back and forth, from warm soft skin to cool crisp fabric.

“You're dry,” she remarked. “Why?”

“Um...” When Cosima laughed, her stomach quivered. “I, uh, I wasn't in the water like you were.”

“Why not?”

“Because I had to take a phone call.” She stroked Delphine's hair and the back of her neck so Delphine purred like a kitten. “I'll tell you about it tomorrow, when your sweet beautiful brain is working again.”

Tomorrow didn't exist yet, but Cosima's legs did. They were firm and silky smooth with subtle moving valleys of muscle conforming to Delphine's hands. Cosima gasped when Delphine moved her whole hand up the inside of Cosima's right thigh.

“Delphine? Babe? We're, um, we're in public. People can see us.”

Maybe they could, but all Delphine could see was the cute little hollow at the base of Cosima's neck, which was just the right size for her tongue, and the rise of her shoulder muscles from her clavicles. “So?” she whispered.

“So, I don't really want to do this in front of everyone and their sister.”

“You don't want to?” Cosima never said she didn't want to. Okay, maybe sometimes she did, but that usually coincided with Delphine's agreement. She pulled back to look at Cosima's face, and the world swam around again for a minute.

“Not right here. But...”

Cosima stood and led her by the hand to the room with all the games and the little kitchenette, grabbing a bottle of water along the way. They passed Scott and Helena playing a violent game of air hockey, and Helena laughed until she was bent over and banging on the table while Scott shouted something about cheating. Four empty, crumb-covered plates sat nearby. Helena's curls snaked and twisted around her head in time with the Hozier song playing softly on the speaker in the corner of the room.

“They're different songs,” Delphine remarked.

“What's that?” Cosima held her finger tips in hers, both of their arms extended as Cosima tried pulling Delphine along.

Delphine pointed outside and then to their current location. “There. And there. Different songs.”

Cosima's smile was sweet as she cocked her head and stepped over to her. “Yup. They sure are. Come on.” She hooked a finger into the waistband of Delphine's shorts and tugged a little.

Through the door beside the kitchenette was a storage room, filled with folded metal chairs, stacks of bar towels, extra game equipment, and pool toys. Off-white canvas bags were piled up in one corner, and Cosima pulled Delphine down beside her after flopping down herself. Delphine peeled off her bathing suit, rubbed her arm across the low-thread-count fabric, and smelled salt in the air. “Amatique Bay,” she said.

“Hm?”

Delphine positioned herself to hover naked above Cosima. “It's like Amatique Bay, remember? From Guatemala to Belize?”

“Oh, yeah, right. On Latin America's cheapest legal ferry during a tropical storm. We had more clothes on then. I'm surprised you're still smiling at that memory, even if you are high off your gourd.”

“I was with you.” And she bent down and her kissed her lips.

Cosima's mouth was everything. Sweet and salty, soft and firm, wet and giving all at once, and Delphine gave it all of herself. She pushed into it, into Cosima's body against the lumpy bags of laundry or whatever was in them, and she raked her fingernails up Cosima's torso, up under her bathing suit top to brush the soft undersides of her breasts. Cosima arched her back to let Delphine's hands behind her, but as much as she fumbled, Delphine failed at removing the garment separating her from Cosima's chest. She dropped her forehead onto the bag beside Cosima's head, and pouted.

“Having trouble? Here.” She wriggled out of the top and caressed Delphine's face, and Delphine's mouth went dry. Uncomfortably dry. “Here,” Cosima said again, and there was the bottle of water Delphine had forgotten all about.

Delphine drank a few mouthfuls and let the water molecules permeate the membranes inside her mouth and her throat, filling each cell to a plump ripeness, like grapes on the vine.

And speaking of plump, Cosima's nipples were _right there_! Delphine dropped her mouth onto Cosima's left breast and licked her nipple until it puckered up in her mouth. Only when Cosima laughed did she realize that she'd still had water in her mouth, which now covered half of Cosima's torso and part of the canvas bags they lay on.

“Oh. Sorry.” She tried to mop the water up with her hands, but her hands failed at being absorbent, and Cosima took her wrists to stop her.

“It's okay. A little wetness never hurt anybody, right?”

There was that cheeky smile, and Delphine giggled, too. “Right.” She dug her fingers into Cosima's hips and kissed her breast a few more times. “Touch me?”

Cosima didn't answer right away, but ran her hands over Delphine's back, shoulders, neck, and arms while Delphine nipped at the underside of Cosima's breast. “If you want me to touch more of you, you'll have to let me up.”

She would have, but mixed in with the Amatique Bay salt and canvas smell was Cosima's smell, and what she needed more than anything was Cosima. The little string on the front of Cosima's shorts came undone easily, and then Cosima was naked, too, on her back with her knees spread and her thighs framing Delphine's head.

And she _knew_ this taste. She knew these textures, the tiny soft ridges and loose folds; she knew the flavor of Cosima's body when she was aroused, the heady mixture of vanilla and citrus, or sometimes it was sweeter like a freshly baked custard tart, and then sometimes, every good smell in the world made her think of Cosima.

From across the universe, Cosima whimpered. Each movement of Delphine's mouth elicited another little squeak, moan, or whine, and when she adjusted herself to put her fingers inside Cosima's body, she heard a low rumbly, “Oh, fuck.” Before long, Cosima's heels beat against the canvas bags she rested on, and her cries echoed in the little storage room.

“Stop,” she said, her voice shaky, “that's enough, no more.”

So she stopped, and pushed herself on shaking legs to lay beside her. The scent in the air was thick now, so Delphine swam in it as Cosima flopped her arm over her waist. When Cosima twitched against her, hips spasming in tiny recursive orgasms, Delphine laughed. “You can swim with me,” she said into Cosima's hair.

“One day. When you're sober.”

Delphine's leg found its way around Cosima's, and the pressure and heat between both of them yanked her heart down into her groin. “We can swim right now. You can swim inside of me, if you want to.”

“Hmmm... You've taken all my energy, though.”

Cosima's hand slithered down her side, though, to cup her right ass cheek, and Delphine wiggled herself against it. “I can give you more energy if you need it.”

She smiled against Delphine's neck. “Oh, really? You gonna spit more water on me?”

“No.” In reality, it didn't matter how much energy Cosima had, so long as she was awake. Delphine took Cosima's hand from her ass and tucked it in between her legs, fingers in just the right places. The simple presence of her hand there nearly pushed her over the edge, but Cosima pulled away. “No!” Delphine cried.

Cosima kissed her lips, then her chin. “Shh, it's okay. It's just easier if I'm on top right now. I can use my body weight that way. Don't worry, you'll get there.”

Still, Delphine grabbed at Cosima's skin as she moved herself to Delphine's other side. “Come here. Just come here.”

“I'm here, gorgeous, don't worry.”

And then Cosima's fingers were inside her and her mouth was on Delphine's breast, and her body opened like a ripe peeled plum. She pushed herself against Cosima's hand and body and dug into her scalp and the back of her neck and the room sucked into her before exploding in countless points of light and sound and taste and sensation blended together in every speck of her being, forever.

*

*

*

Otters swam with dolphins all around her. One of them whispered in her ear, “I'm pretty sure everybody heard that.”

She would have laughed if she had the energy. A talking otter, with breath like a fresh clementine. Instead, she just smiled.

Soft lips brushed her shoulder. “Are you gonna fall asleep here?”

“Hm?”

“I asked if you're gonna fall asleep here. It's not exactly comfortable for me, but I'm not baked like you are.”

“Am I baked?” Images of bread and cookies floated around with the otters, who themselves turned into dinner rolls with eyes. It wasn't entirely pleasant.

Another giggle. “You are super baked, my love. You probably don't even know where you are right now.”

Nonsense. “I'm in space,” she said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Another kiss. “It's pretty cold in space, though. And you're not allowed to go outside naked.”

Come to think of it, it was a little chilly here. She moved her head from side to side, and the dinner roll otters vanished. In their place was a cluster of pool noodles watching her with disapproving expressions. “Mais putain, allez tous vous faire foutre,” she told them, and raised her middle finger.

“Hey, I didn't make the rules.” Cosima stood and stretched, her strong little body marked with red lines.

Delphine watched her put her bathing suit back on and retie her hair. Then Cosima opened the door and leaned halfway out. She said something, called out to someone out there, but her words were drowned out by the judgmental chatter of the pool noodles. “Écoutez,” she told them, rising off her seat to point at them. “Je m'en fous!”

“Hey, babe?” Cosima touched the small of her back and steered her away. She had a bag on her hand. “We're gonna get you dressed, okay? Then we're gonna get you back home and in bed. Can you help me with that?”

“Mmm. Okay.”

She didn't remember getting dressed, but there were lights flashing outside the car window and Cosima's hand held hers. When the door opened, she almost fell out. 

“It's red,” she said.

“Yup,” Cosima said. “Alison's van's been red the whole time. Come on, up inside now.” 

Alison said something, and then Delphine was in bed, a heavy comforter weighing on her, and Cosima kissed her temple. “Goodnight, beautiful. I hope your dreams aren't too fucked up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The mention of Delphine stitching behind Sarah's ear comes from MlleClaudine's delightful Cophine series << https://archiveofourown.org/series/314495 >> If you haven't read it yet, I don't know where you've been. Get reading it!
> 
> Speaking of MlleClaudine, thank you so so so much for checking this over and making sure I don't get too much wrong. 
> 
> Also, thanks always and perpetually to FrenchClone for helping me with all of the French. Merci toujours !


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer reminder: I haven't been to the Middle East, so if I've gotten some details wrong, please let me know in a respectful manner. This chapter and the upcoming ones involved some interesting research, and I've tried talking to people who've been there, but of course things slip through sometimes. Let me know!

The night after the party, after a small dinner at Sarah's house, Cosima and Delphine rode with Sarah to the airport as cold evening rain peppered the city. Most of the trip was silent, with Cosima in the front seat and Delphine in the back with their carry-on bags. Delphine had spent most of the day recovering and doing a great unintentional impression of a cartoon sloth, but the after-effects of last night's brownies had worn off by late afternoon, and she was more or less back to her usual self. 

As the airport infrastructure came into view, Sarah sniffed loudly and rubbed her nose. 

“You gonna be a'right, then?” she asked. 

Cosima peeled her face from the passenger side window and blinked at her sister. “Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna be fine. Why?”

“No reason.”

Sarah steered the car towards International Departures and sucked on her teeth. 

“We will have personal security from the moment we arrive in Baghdad,” Delphine assured her. “It's a highly reviewed company, personally recommended by our contacts both here and abroad.”

“Yeah, I know.” Sarah rubbed her nose some more and the airport itself came into view. “I would feel a bit better if Helena went along with you, though, to be honest.”

Cosima laughed and imagined Helena following them around the Middle East. Hell, just getting her through airport security would be a trick to write home about. Putting a hand on Sarah's shoulder, Cosima said, “Do not worry about us. We're okay with what we have, and Helena needs to stay here with her boys. And don't go reading too many news stories about the places we're going to, either.”

Sarah laughed. “Not often someone accuses me of reading too much. Anyway, it's not me. It's the kids, reading up on every place you two go off to. I've got Alison on my case, too, telling me every little horror story she sees online –”

“Yes, we've heard,” Delphine cut in. “She's been on our cases, too.”

“She's calmed down recently, though,” Cosima added. 

“And Art,” Sarah went on, like the words were being pushed from her body against her will. “He's coming to me every week with some other story he heard from one of the translators about someone's brother getting his head cut off, or somebody's sister being sold off to IS for God knows what. It's not like I just can't listen, Cos.”

The car wound its way into the departures lane and down the alphabet of airlines as everyone thought about what Sarah had said. Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air France...

“Well,” Cosima said, “just remember, and tell everybody else this, too, that the stuff that makes the news, and the stories people tell, are the exceptions. I mean, yeah, obviously it happens, but not every day. Aid workers go in and out of Iraq and Syria every day without getting any more than a paper cut or a couple of nasty pimples.”

“We're being careful,” Delphine added. “We're being very careful.”

Sarah made a face. “Right.”

Five minutes later, Sarah pulled up to the curb near the Turkish Airlines sign. There were hugs and promises to call once they'd arrived in Baghdad, and as Cosima and Delphine went inside with their suitcases and bags, Sarah leaned against her car and watched them go. 

Inside, the check-in process was smooth and the security checks predictable, and when they settled into the airport-standard restaurant close to their terminal, they still had thirty minutes before boarding their plane. They sat sipping water and nibbling on what passed for a “harvest salad,” and Cosima watched the other late-night fliers going by while Delphine did her daily social media Leda check, twelve hours later than she usually did. 

“You did yours, then?” she asked Cosima. 

“Yeah, at lunch time. You were kinda busy trying to remember that pool noodles aren't sentient, though, so you get a pass.” Cosima kissed Delphine's cheek, then her lips. It would be weeks, or possibly months, before she could that in public again. “You were super cute the whole time, though, fyi.”

Delphine grunted and resumed flipping through status updates of new bikinis, inspirational quotes, and cute babies. 

“By the way, didn't Gabriela call you last night?”

“You mean while you were baked out of your mind and climbing all over my sister?”

Delphine looked like she had a retort coming, but just rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

Cosima giggled and squeezed her fiancée's arm to show no ill will. “Yeah, apparently her husband's divorcing her. Guess he was only in it as a monitor, and he was kind of convinced they could have kids, but when that obviously didn't happen, he peaced out.”

“Hm.” If Delphine had any thoughts or comments about being a monitor herself, she kept them to herself. Her thumb hovered over her Facebook feed. “Look at this.”

“What's up?”

The post Delphine pointed to was in Hebrew, and the picture beneath it showed a hand with an IV going into it. 

“Oh, shit,” Cosima whispered. 

“It's Avigail Chernev,” Delphine said. “One of the Israelis. It's the first time she's posted anything in almost a year.”

Cosima scooted her chair over to get a better view. “Is that her hand? For sure?”

“I assume so. It looks like yours.”

Cosima held her own hand up next to the picture on the phone and squinted. “I'll take your word for that. You are, like, the Leda expert at this point.”

Delphine's eyebrows twitched. “Yes, I suppose I am. You're still my favorite, though.”

“Thank fuck for that.” 

Delphine took a screenshot of the Facebook post and emailed it to David Margolis, their Hebrew translator and Israeli cultural guide based back in Toronto. They would translate it themselves, too, with Google, but David's translations were more accurate and nuanced, and he could more easily match up the texts with others he had on file for both Israeli Ledas. 

“There's WiFi on the plane, at least,” Delphine went on, “we'll need to monitor this pretty closely.”

Despite the severity of the situation, Cosima smirked. “Did you seriously just say monitor? Even after what I said about Gabriela's husband?”

Delphine stuck her tongue out and copy/ pasted Avigail's status into Google translate. In a second, the English side read _Third treatment of the week, here we hope we can cure it soon!_

“Third of the week, shit,” Cosima murmured. She pulled up a map of the Middle East on her phone and measured the distance between Baghdad and Tel Aviv. It was a hell of a lot closer than Toronto, but they weren't exactly next door neighbors. And then there was the whole messy political situation.

Meanwhile, Delphine pulled the Europe and the Middle East notebook from her carry-on bag. She flipped through it and tapped her finger on the first Israeli entry. 

__  
Avigail Chernev, born 11 June, 1984, in Bet Shemesh, current residence Tel Aviv  
Monitor as of 2016 – Daniel Fridman  
Primary care physician as of 2016 – Dr. Joseph Blachar [two msg sent by D.Cormier via D.Margolis, no replies]  
Social media contacts attempted 21 July, 3 September, and 4 December – no response  


Delphine added a line about today's Facebook post on the otherwise empty page that stood in sharp contrast to the information-crowded pages on either side. The page before detailed the medical history and social media habits of Lonah Gerbi, the clone in Haifa they had already made an appointment to treat. Delphine tapped Lonah's page. 

“We're not scheduled to be in Israel until the end of May,” she said. “Eight weeks from now.”

“Right, and we scheduled Lonah's treatment after all these other countries for a reason.”

She checked the time. They had fifteen minutes until boarding their plane to Istanbul, where they had a five hour lay-over before flying on to Baghdad. Baghdad, of course, being in one of the many countries with restrictions on travelers who'd had their passports stamped in Israel. Then she looked at Avigail's hand again. Third treatment in one week. Failed treatments, almost certainly, probably radiation or some kind of chemotherapy. The side effects alone probably kept her from working or taking care of her family or whatever else she would have been doing otherwise, and it was quite likely that the treatments had actually hastened the disease's progression, as it had in Jennifer Fitzsimmons.

“She can't wait until May,” Cosima said. “None of the other clones in the Middle East have shown these kinds of symptoms.”

“That we know of.”

She nodded. “That we know of.” Of course. More than once before had a Leda stayed quiet and private right up until she was dying, and only then did Delphine and Cosima hear anything about it. Desperation brought people out of hiding. Or, in the case of Nooran in Djibouti, brought the attention of enough people to point Cosima and Delphine in the right direction.

Delphine was watching her with those big doe eyes, waiting for her to say something, but the decision was obvious. 

“I'll email the airline from the plane,” Cosima said. “Change the flight from Istanbul to Tel Aviv instead of Baghdad.”

Delphine's face didn't change, though. She licked her lips. “We still have to cure the others, though. Even if they don't have symptoms, we still have to – ”

“Oh, for sure, we're curing them, too. But we have to get to Avigail first.”

“Yes, but – ”

The airport announcement gong sounded, announcing preboarding to Turkish Airlines Flight XXX bound for Istanbul. They packed up their things, threw away their trash, and went to loiter near the gate with everyone else. At this hour, the crowd of passengers was quiet, mostly businessmen buried in their phones or newspapers.

“What if,” Cosima offered, “we just ask them not to stamp our passports in Tel Aviv?”

Delphine snorted. “Yes, certainly. Have you ever tried telling a passport controller what to do?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Well, I don't think it's a very good idea.”

Some of the businessmen looked up from their devices to listen to the only conversation happening, but the announcer called for first class boarding, so Cosima and Delphine hoisted their bags back onto their shoulders and got on the plane.

Once they were in their seats, enjoying the perks of the frequent flyer program, Cosima said, “Maybe someone else can go to Israel. Cure the Israelis, and we finish up the rest of the Middle East.” 

“It's an idea,” Delphine agreed.

Cosima pulled out her phone and texted Scott while the coach passengers filed past. 

A minute later, though, that idea was shot. _I'd love to,_ he replied, _but I can't take that kind of time off work. We have a big project right now._

She swore under her breath but typed, _Okay, thx anyway_

The faces of Clone Club flashed before her eyes, and she imagined all of them in lab coats in an Israeli clinic, syringe in hand. Art, Sarah, Alison, Helena, ... None of them fit that image. None of them had experience putting needles in people. Well, Helena might, but she probably wasn't used to aiming the needles with the intention of helping, and she had none of the other necessary skills for this endeavor. 

She tapped on her phone until the crew directed them to turn off their devices, and held Delphine's hand as Toronto faded away below them. When the city was entirely gone behind clouds, she turned to Delphine and said, “Rachel would do it. She gave me my treatment, and she knows clone stuff.”

“And she is completely inaccessible to anyone who wants to contact her.”

“And there's that. Fuck.”

Once the fasten seatbelt sign was off, they both had their laptops out, emailing everyone on the Clone Club listserv for ideas and support. David Margolis confirmed their translation of Avigail's status and offered to reach out to her in Hebrew for them, which Delphine replied would be very helpful. Delphine posted a notification on the Foundation's website, just in case Rachel happened to be checking in from wherever she was. Cosima's Google searches confirmed that, indeed, for most of the countries they would be traveling to in the next two months, entrance was denied to anyone who'd been to Israel. 

After thirty minutes, though, Cosima found herself staring into space at the shadowy clouds moving below them, forgetting what the hell she'd been typing, or starting one sentence and finishing it with another thought entirely. Beside her, Delphine kept trying to hide her yawns. 

“It's after midnight,” Cosima said, dropping her head on Delphine's shoulder. “Maybe one of us should get some rest.”

Delphine kissed her forehead. “You go ahead. I'm used to working late.”

“And I'm not, is that what you're saying?”

“Mmm, yes. You work late, of course, but not like this.”

“Not on an airplane.”

“Correct.”

* 

Delphine was right. Something about traveling had this way of knocking Cosima right out. Maybe the sound of a motor, steady total-body vibration, and occasional rocking back and forth made her feel safe, like she was six years old again and her parents were taking care of everything. 

When she woke up, the window shade was closed and Delphine's light travel blanket was tucked around her shoulders. To her right, Delphine dozed with her arms across her chest and her head tipped to one side, laptop still open on her tray. The rest of the cabin was bathed in daylight and a flight attendant went down the aisle announcing the last call for beverages or snacks. According to her phone, it was 7:20 in the morning, but when she raised the shade the sun was well above the horizon. 

Right. If it was 7:20 am in Toronto, it was 2:20 pm in Istanbul, and they were scheduled to land at 3:15. 

She opened her laptop, trying not to jostle Delphine as she checked her email. Five new messages. 

Art said he would look into it but made no promises, which could really apply to most of the emails they'd exchanged with him over the past year.

David Margolis forwarded both Cosima and Delphine the email chain with Avigail Chernev, her medical team, and himself. Avigail's primary doctor right now, it said, was a Dr. Ada Bronstein, and both she and Avigail were excited about the possibility of a new treatment option.

There was an email from her mother, linking to an article about a suicide bombing in Basra and begging Cosima to be careful while she was over there.

Her advisor at U Minn sent her a list of epigentics conferences that Cosima “really should consider presenting at.”

And to her surprise, Rebecca Twell replied to Cosima's mass email, saying she was so sorry to hear that another of their identicals was ill, but Rebecca could not take off that kind of time, either, and regardless she did not feel comfortable administering any kind of medical treatment to anyone. She ended her email with a reminder that if and when Cosima and Delphine made it to Scotland, they should absolutely drop by for a pint.

Cosima went back up to the email chain and tapped Dr. Bronstein's number into her phone. That five-hour lay-over coming up in Istanbul was starting to feel awfully short.

*

At Istanbul Atatürk Airport, they got microwaved sandwiches and juice from Starbucks and found a terminal waiting area with no one else sitting in it, so they could spread out over several seats and the floor, charging everything that needed electricity. Delphine exchanged more emails with David Margolis and Avigail's medical team, and compared her symptoms with notes in the MEDICAL notebook that listed all observed symptoms and treatments with side effects. 

Cosima called everyone, starting with Adele. Alphabetical order seemed as good as any order right now.

Adele answered with a dynamic yawn. “Oh, hey, Puddin' Pie, how are you doin'? How's Delphine, more to the point? She back from her brownie trip yet?” 

“Yeah, yeah, she's good,” Cosima said. “Did you get our email?”

“Huh? No, I haven't checked yet. Why, what's up?”

While Cosima explained the situation, Adele responded with various “uh huh,” “yeah,” or “well shit.” When Cosima finished, Adele laughed. “Oh, honey, I wish I could help you. I really do. But heroin is the one drug I will never, ever touch. Needles skeeve the hell outta me. I stick to drugs that go into holes my body already has.”

Cosima had not said anything about heroin, but she laughed for Adele's sake and said, “Okay, that's cool. That's, uh, probably for the best, actually.”

“Yeah. Hey, have you tried Colin, though? He's gotta have some skills there, right?”

“Uh, not yet. I don't have his contact info, actually. Do you?”

“No, but you know who does.”

Felix picked up on the third ring. “You want Colin's phone number? What for?”

“For the stuff I emailed you about. Did you get our email?”

“I mean, I skimmed it. I've only been up for about 30 minutes. Why? You still haven't found anybody?”

“No. Colin's, like, potentially our last hope.”

Felix muttered something unintelligible, but a moment later produced the number for her, and listened as she read it back to him. “He won't go, though,” Felix added. “I'm certain of that.”

“Why's that?”

“Well, first of all, he's hates flying. He's only flown once, and that was to Calgary ten years ago. He doesn't even have a passport.”

“He doesn't...?” She had forgotten that people could even exist in the world without a passport. “Wow.”

“So, feel free to call him. Tell him that I'm not pining away in his absence, and that he's much more attractive when his head's not shoved up his own arse.”

“You know, I think I'll let you tell him all of those things, and I'll just stick to clone business, okay?”

She called Colin and left a message, and checked the message that had dinged while she was talking to Felix. A picture greeted her at the tap of her thumb: the main room of Nooran's apartment in Djibouti, with the girls and Mohammed, the younger boy, sitting around a folding table that had not been there when Cosima last visited. On the table were the art supplies Cosima and Delphine had given them, and each of the younger children held up a piece of artwork to show off. Fatima sat the farthest from the camera, and she held a book close to her chest, a smile tugging at her lips. The table wasn't the only new item in the photo – a calendar and a flag decorated the wall, and a drying rack laden with laundry snuck into view in the lower right corner. The cell phone used to take the picture must have been new, too, since the family had not had one before.

While Cosima studied the picture, distracted for a moment from Avigail's troubles in Israel, another message popped up, this time showing Nabil taking a selfie with his siblings in the background. Tapping Delphine to get her attention, Cosima took a picture of them together, Delphine smiling and Cosima making a face, and sent it to the kids.

“They are such good kids,” Cosima remarked. “We gotta see if we can keep helping them out, somehow.”

“Mmhm.” Delphine's attention was already back on the task at hand. “Julian can't go. Neither can any of my other medical contacts, including the doctors we know are aware of the cloning situation. All of them are busy, uninterested, or no longer reachable at their former email addresses. I texted Ali, even, from Tripoli, but he's tied up for the rest of the month, apparently.”

“Why Ali? He doesn't have medical training.”

“No, but I thought maybe he could at least transport the cure to Avigail's doctors for us. They could administer it, I expect, on their own, although I haven't confirmed that with them.”

“Oh, yeah. That is a good idea.” She texted Clone Club back with that idea – not to treat, but to transport. Anyone could do that. Anyone that didn't need to go to any of the Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries that Cosima and Delphine needed to go to, that is. 

Colin called back at 4:23 pm Istanbul time. “I'm sorry, you want me to do what, now?” he asked.

She gave the spiel again. “And you're really our last hope.”

“Why can't you do it?”

“Because once we get an Israeli stamp, all these other countries won't let us in. It's geopolitical bullshit.”

Colin exhaled into the receiver. “I don't think you understood my question. Why can't just one of you go, and the other one go to all the other countries? I mean, there are two of you, right?”

Cosima bit her tongue and pushed her hand into the top of her head. “Well, for starters, all the people we're curing look exactly like me. Haven't you noticed? We're clones. It's gonna be pretty weird for me to look all of them in the eye before treating them.”

There was another heavy sigh on the other end of the phone. “And you can't futz your way around that for one dying woman? Wear colored contacts or something? Seems like it'd be pretty easy. I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”

Felix's last comment about the location of Colin's head came to mind, but Cosima said, “Just trust me. It's not the best idea.”

“Well, I haven't got any other ideas for you. I am not flying to Israel for you. I am not sticking a syringe into a woman I've never met for you. I am not going to deliver biological material that I have not personally inspected to a doctor I've never met for you. I don't even work with the living, remember? I sure as hell don't speak Hebrew.”

“That part really doesn't matter. Think about it, at least?”

“Yeah, maybe. But I'm not changing my mind.”

 _Just go yourself_. She could change her appearance somehow and treat both Israeli Ledas while Delphine was in Iraq, but then Delphine would be in _Iraq_ all by herself. And several weeks after that, Delphine would have to go to _Syria_ all by herself, because Cosima would not be allowed in either of those countries.

Cosima made her way down her contacts lists and called everyone she hadn't already talked to, to see if they or anyone else they knew would be willing to pick up the job. Some people she called again, just in case.

“We'll sort something out,” Sarah assured her after coming up with no new ideas. “I already gave Art a call.”

Cosima even called her mother.

“Oh, Sweetie, I'd love to help,” her mother said, her voice heavy with sleep, “but I am completely unqualified for that kind of work. Even though you know your grandma's been trying to send me to Israel for decades, like with that Birthright program, you know, but for older adults instead of teenagers? Anyway, Israel would be great, but I really just can't go treating someone's illness. I'd probably do it wrong and make everything worse. I'd stick the needle in the wrong organ or something. I work with fish, not people.”

“Well, maybe you could just bring the cure into the country, then? Drop it off and take a week to see the sights.” 

“Oh I can't. I'm having bunion surgery tomorrow. Did I tell you that?”

Bunion surgery. Great. “Uh, no,” Cosima said. “You didn't. How 'bout you send me an email all about it, huh? I have to make some other calls. Unless you think your podiatrist might want to go to Israel for us?”

Sally laughed. “No, but she is Jewish, and I think she's been before. Hey, why don't you just mail it? The treatment, I mean? It's all sealed up, isn't it? You'd have to pay extra, but I don't think that's a big issue.”

Cosima could have kicked herself for not thinking of that earlier, but still, the idea didn't sit well with her. She and Delphine made a point to personally carry the treatment whenever they travelled specifically because they didn't trust anyone else with it. When she floated the idea to Delphine, Delphine's face mimicked her own.

“I mean, it's possible,” Delphine conceded. “But certainly not ideal.”

“I don't know how many other options we have, though.”

She shook her head. “Not very many. None that I like very much. We have a phone conference with Dr. Bronstein in about ten minutes, though, so we can always run it by her, see what she thinks.” Delphine checked her watch and muttered “putain” under her breath before winding the little knob to get in sync with local time. “It's very last minute, of course. I was afraid we might have to wait until tomorrow to talk to her, and, like we've been saying, Avigail doesn't have much time left. Dr. Bronstein seems willing to do whatever it takes, though.”

In the time before their phone conference, Alison called, and after a moment of checking in, repeated Colin's suggestion. “I don't know why you don't just go over there yourself, Cosima. You and Delphine are the only ones who have any experience with this. Put a surgical mask on and no one will notice you look the same.”

Cosima bit her tongue. “So you don't know anyone who could step in and help us out? No one at all?”

“No one who I'm willing to out myself to by sending them to Israel to treat one of my clones, no. Just go! You can rejoin Delphine when she's finished treating all our sisters in those... other countries. Or, you know, like I've been saying all along, you can just split the work and get it all done in half the time.”

“Alison,” Cosima began, “People recognize me. They recognize that I look like other people. Don't you remember how you felt way back when Beth first contacted you, first said you were a clone...”

Delphine nudged her before she could continue. “Dr. Bronstein's calling.”

“Gotta go, Alison. We'll talk soon, yeah?” She hung up before Alison could say anything else, and popped in Delphine's left earbud so she could participate in the conversation without annoying the few other passengers now camping out in the waiting area with them. Cosima took a deep breath to center herself and switch her brain from Sestra mode to professional mode as Delphine gave Dr. Bronstein a warm greeting.

“Yes, hello to both of you,” Dr. Bronstein said with a voice that reminded Cosima of character from _Downton Abbey_. “It's so felicitous that you've found us. I'm afraid Ms. Chernev's prognosis is quite poor at this point.”

“Yes, that's my understanding, as well,” Delphine said. “She knows that you're in contact with us, yes?”

“Oh yes, I've just spoken with her and her family, and Ms. Chernev has signed the agreement allowing me to discuss her condition with you and your translator, Mr. Margolis. I believe a PDF of the agreement has been emailed to you, as well.”

Cosima didn't see it right away, but considering everything else they were doing to save the Ledas, she wasn't too worried about a single release of information form. 

“So, Dr. Bronstein, can you give us another quick run-down of Avigail's symptoms and prognosis so far?” she said. 

“Well, she's been in my care for almost two years,” Dr. Bronstein told them, “starting with lung polyps that remain and have no clear cause.” She went on to give every symptom of the disease, and all the attempted treatments. Avigail had had numerous seizures that resisted the effects of anti-convulsant medications, and she'd been on oxygen full-time for the past year. Her doctors had tried every treatment that Cosima would expect them to and then some. Avigail had lost her hair and now weighed only forty-one kilograms. Her vision was spotty, She had difficulty swallowing. She was jaundiced. Her kidneys failed almost a year ago, and she was on dialysis, but the rest of her health conditions kept her off the kidney transplant list. 

“Anyway,” Dr. Bronstein concluded, “I don't know exactly how you've found us, but any help you can offer is incredibly welcome. We don't know how much time she has left, since we've never seen something like this before, but, well, to be honest, it might not be very much time at all. Her family's been advised to help her get her things in order.”

Cosima hung on every word Dr. Bronstein said, picturing the cells and tissues and organs, and the woman lying on the hospital bed. “Third treatment this week,” she'd said, just that morning, on her Facebook page. The understatement of the century, it seemed. If nothing else, Avigail's attitude seemed positive. 

“I'm glad she has her family with her,” Cosima said. 

While Dr. Bronstein gave a standard sort of agreement, Delphine put her arm around Cosima's waist and held her tight, until an airport employee walked by and gave them a double take, and Cosima scooted away. On her own cell phone she typed _We're in Turkey again, babe_ and showed it to Delphine. There could be no public displays of affection here.

“So, Dr. Bronstein,” Cosima said, “we've actually seen this condition a few times before, and we're very interested in treating Avigail if she'll let us, but, um –”

“Yes, that's what your colleague said in her email. How soon can you get here?” She laughed, and Cosima had a mental image of large front teeth.

“Well, that's just the thing,” Cosima began. “We'd love to get there as soon as possible, but –”

“–but we're also going to a lot of other countries in the region,” Delphine finished when Cosima's hand flapping indicated she needed help.

“I see,” Dr. Bronstein said.

“For the same purpose,” Delphine went on, “and our understanding is that we're not allowed into those countries after we've been to Israel.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone, and Cosima and Delphine exchanged a long look. In her research, Cosima had run across another interesting fact – people who visited Palestine were occasionally not allowed to enter Israel, unless they were Israeli citizens. She'd made a mental note of that and moved on, since they didn't plan to visit Palestine, but now she dredged it back out.

“For what it's worth, Dr. Bronstein, we're traveling exclusively for medical purposes. We really have no interest in anyone's political positions. We just want to cure these women. And, again, for whatever it's worth, we are not planning to go to Palestine. We haven't heard of any patients there with this condition.”

“Oh! Hahaha...” Dr. Bronstein chuckled. “No, no, I was thinking more of our patient here. You see, I've reached out to other doctors, and no one has any idea, either, so I'm simply surprised, ehm, surprised that you've had so much experience. That's all. And, worried, quite frankly. I am quite worried about what will happen if she is not treated soon.”

“Well, we have the treatment with us,” Delphine said. “We could send it to you.”

“With you? As in...?”

“As in, we're sitting next to it right now,” Cosima said. “But we're worried that if we bring it over, we won't be allowed into some of the other countries that we really need to get into.”

“I see. Well, one of you could come and the other could go to the other countries. Or not?”

That idea again. The worst part was that it was right. It would be the easiest solution. It would also be the absolute worst one.

“Yes,” Delphine acknowledged, “that is one of our possibilities, but we'd prefer not to travel alone if at all possible. I'm sure you understand.”

“Well, where else are you going, exactly?”

Delphine pulled up the itinerary she had save on her laptop. “Iraq, later today. Iran, Kuwait, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria...” Below Syria on the list were Jordan and Israel, followed by the European countries, but the noises Dr. Bronstein was making on the other end of the phone interrupted that flow.

“You're going to Syria?” Dr. Bronstein exclaimed. “Have you really found a patient there in such dire straights that you must absolutely go into that blazing inferno to treat them?”

Dire straights was putting it rather dramatically for most of the Ledas at the moment, since less than twenty percent had developed visible symptoms, but that was beside the point. “Yes,” Delphine said. “We have. She may have more time than Avigail, but we don't know how much.”

“Well, you certainly are dedicated,” Dr. Bronstein said. “You're not going to Jordan, then? It's a bit more peaceful.

“We are,” Cosima said. “After Syria.”

“I see. I was going to tell you that entering Jordan and Egypt is often easier after a trip to Israel than some of the other countries are, so you may consider going there instead.”

Cosima leaned her head back against the wall. That was not the point. “We'll keep that in mind, thank you.”

“About our other suggestion, though,” Delphine said, “about us mailing you the treatments. There would be five vials, all properly secured, with extensive instructions --”

“Erm, I don't know about that. You've administered this treatment to other women, you say?”

“Yes, more than a hundred of them.”

“Oh! Well, I can't think of anyone better qualified, then, to administer than yourself. I wouldn't feel completely comfortable no matter how extensive your instructions are, if I knew that there was someone better qualified to do it. And I assure you, Tel Aviv is quite safe. You don't need to worry about traveling alone here.”

Dr. Bronstein probably had a reassuring smile on her face, but Cosima's stomach continued the drop it had started twelve hours earlier. If Avigail's main doctor did not want to give her the cure herself, there wasn't much chance anyone else over there would, either.

“And if you're worried about the stamp,” the doctor went on, “I'm told that many tourists don't get their passports stamped at all. They have this little piece of paper they stamp for you instead. You can throw that away once you've left the country, if you like.”

Cosima and Delphine looked at each other. That changed everything. “Really?” Cosima asked.

“That's what I've been told. I'm a citizen, myself, so of course I've never been in that position.”

“It's worth a try,” Delphine said. 

“Can we expect a visit, then?” Dr. Bronstein asked. 

“We, euh, we need a few minutes to discuss it, privately,” Delphine told her. “May we call you back?”

“Of course. This is my mobile, so it shouldn't be any trouble.”

They got off the phone, and Cosima started pacing around. “If they just don't stamp it for anyone, we've been pulling our hair out for nothing. Not that I'm complaining, but, it would be suspiciously convenient.”

Delphine tapped away at her keyboard, then her eyes darted back and forth. “Other travelers back it up, actually.”

“Shit, we should've just put that in our Google search first. Here I was trying to see if I could tear the page out of my passport without anyone getting suspicious.”

Delphine leaned back against the wall, fingers resting on her keyboard. “You want to be the one to go, then?”

“I think it makes the most sense.”

Delphine nodded. “I agree. Just in case, you know.”

“In case they don't let me in anywhere else, after all. Which is still a possibility, I think.”

“I think so, too, but I don't know how much of one.”

Cosima thought of everything Dr. Bronstein had said about Avigail, about how she seemed to be staying alive out of sheet pluck while her body fell apart all around her. In the end, there really had been only one solution – this one. “Go ahead and call her back,” she told Delphine. “I can be there by tomorrow morning.”

*

A few hours later, after a visit to the ticketing agent, a phone call with Alison, two more phone calls and an email with Dr. Bronstein, and repacking of their carry-on bags, they stood together just outside the terminal for Delphine's departing flight to Baghdad, which she would take alone. Cosima's flight to Tel Aviv left in two more hours. Outside the terminal windows, the sun had set almost an hour ago, and each of them had several more waking hours ahead of them. 

“Try to get some rest where you can,” Delphine told her. “You won't do Avigail any good if you're exhausted.”

“Yeah, I could say the same for you.”

“I have a little more time. The appointment isn't for another twenty-five hours.”

“Yeah, but you have to get to it.”

Outside on the tarmac, Delphine's Turkish Airlines plane pulled up to the extendable passenger bridge. Before it began discharging passengers, Cosima nudged Delphine and gestured towards the women's bathroom.

“Come on. Last chance for a little while.”

Delphine followed her into the largest stall and giggled as Cosima locked the door behind them. “You want to have sex in the bathroom? In ten minutes?”

Cosima made a face. “Not sex, no. Not smelling like this. Just...” She draped her arms around Delphine's neck and pulled her down for a long kiss. They stood together holding each other and kissing until passengers flooded the bathroom with their chatter, their laughter, their complaints, and a couple instances of explosive releases. 

“I just wanted to kiss you again,” Cosima said. “It's gonna be a couple days till I can do it again.”

Delphine cupped Cosima's face in her left hand, stroking her earlobe with her pinky finger. “It's just a couple of days. I'll text you when I land, yeah?”

“Yeah. Same. I'll... I'll keep you abreast of all affairs.” Her terrible attempt at imitating Dr. Bronstein's accent made Delphine break into giggles again, but their moment was cut short by knocks on the stall door. 

“We have to go,” Delphine whispered. She peppered Cosima's face with kisses and told her how much she loved her. 

“I love you, too,” Cosima said, just before the knocking resumed with a bit more force. “Be safe, okay?”

“I will, I promise. You, as well.”

When they opened the door, they were greeted by a stout cleaning lady and a couple of curious travelers, all of whom expressed some version of “oh!” Delphine gave them her best smile and a cheery “Bonsoir!” as she and Cosima maneuvered their way through the people and back out into the main terminal. 

And like every other flight they'd taken in this part of the world, Cosima did not hold Delphine's hand in the boarding line, or rest her head on Delphine's shoulder. For those other flights, though, Cosima had still been beside her, and now she wasn't. She stood by the departures board and watched her fiancée move through the line of almost exclusively Middle Eastern travelers and get her ticket checked. Just before rounding the corner onto the passenger bridge, Delphine turned and paused. She smiled and gave Cosima a tiny air kiss, then made her way down the hall and out of sight. 

* * *

Four hours later, standing in line at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Cosima flicked through her messages. Delphine had arrived safely in Baghdad an hour before and was suitably exhausted. She said the security escort was working out fine. Cosima texted her love and sent another message to Dr. Bronstein saying that she was waiting for passport control. 

_Wonderful!_ Dr. Bronstein replied. _I will retrieve you personally and deliver you to our guest house. I am the tall thin woman in the burgundy jacket, but I also have your name on a sign, so we should have no trouble at all finding each other._

In the next message, Alison assured her that “the Jewish family who lives down the street” had been to Israel and never gotten their passports stamped in Tel Aviv, and they'd never had an issue visiting any other countries. She did not, however, specify which other countries they had tried to visit. _See?_ Alison went on, _I told you this would work out just fine._

Scott texted her that one of his Muslim coworkers had tried visiting Israel a few years ago, but got turned away at the border with Jordan. _But that shouldn't be a problem for you,_ Scott said. 

The line inched forward. A baby cried. A man bragged to a woman about the ultra marathon he'd run in Israel last year. A little boy whined about being hungry. And Cosima swayed on her feet with no one to lean against. 

It was after one in the morning when Cosima finally reached the passport control window. She gave the uniformed man behind the glass her best smile and handed over her passport, open to the picture page. 

“Miss Niehaus?” he clarified, winning top marks as one of very few people who got the pronunciation right on the first try. He spent longer than any other passport official ever had comparing her face to her picture, confirmed her date of birth and residence, and asked how long she planned to stay in Israel. 

“Two weeks,” she said. They'd made the mistake way back in Ecuador of being vague but honest about how long they would stay, so now they gave a nice firm, if wrong, time frame right up front. He nodded and began flipping through the passport, slowing down after a few fully-stamped pages. 

“Um, actually,” she said, “I was wondering if I could get one of those stamps pieces of paper instead?”

He glanced up at her and resumed his exploration of her travel history. “You go a lot of places, Miss Niehaus.”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

He clucked his tongue. “Very many places. Mexico. Argentina. Oman. Libya. Saudi Arabia.” He looked up at her with a frown. “And you have visas for Iran, Syria, and Iraq. You plan to visit them later?”

“Yes, well, you see, that's why I'm kind of hoping you might stamp a different paper instead, because they might not let me in if I have your stamp, and well, you know.” She smiled and held up her hands in a “what're you gonna do” gesture, to show that it wasn't his fault politics were all fucked up. 

He did not smile. He leaned over, picked up the phone receiver, and mumbled into it. When he hung up, he gestured for Cosima to step to the left. “Stand aside, please, Miss Niehaus.”

“Oh. Okay, sure. Um, can I have my –”

The officer handed her passport to a tall man in a gray uniform who approached and looked her up and down, one hand on the strap of his rifle.

“Oh, shit,” she whispered.

*

The room they took her to was tiny, with a long table on one side and two metal chairs on the other. A uniformed woman directed her to remove her boots, jacket, belt, and all of her jewelry. She then gave Cosima the most thorough pat down Cosima had gotten from anyone other than Delphine. While that went on, an middle aged woman (Soldier? Guard? Border officer?) sat in one of the metal chairs. The man who'd taken Cosima's passport placed her bags on the long table, and he handed the passport to the second woman, who set a recorder with a blinking red light on the table.

“Sit,” the woman told Cosima. “Take your hair down.”

Cosima did so, and the younger woman worked her fingers down the length of every one of Cosima's dreadlocks.

“It's okay, I left the explosive hair pins at home,” Cosima snarked when the hair inspection was about halfway done. 

The younger woman paused for a moment. “No jokes, please.”

So Cosima sat quietly while the man opened up her bags, setting the electronics to one side, and the older woman looked through her passport. Maybe it was her exhaustion seeping through, but the more she watched them working, the more they reminded her of General Leia Organa and Kylo Ren from the new Star Wars movies.

The officer Cosima now mentally called General Organa began the conversation. “So Miss Niehaus, what brings you to Israel?”

She had practiced professional answer for that. “It's a medical trip. There's a patient here who's arranged for us, I mean, for me to come and treat her.”

“What's the patient's name?”

“Uh, that's confidential. Patient confidentially's very important to us.”

“Who's _us_?”

“The Sadler and Daughter's Foundation. Their information is on a card in my purse.”

The Kylo Ren guard emptied her purse onto the table and fished around in her things until he got the little stack of business cards, which he handed to the General.

General Organa arched an eyebrow. “So you're based in Toronto, but hold a US passport. Where will you be treating this patient?”

“At the Tel Aviv Medical Center.” When the General put the cards back on the table, Cosima added, “I have an appointment there first thing in the morning, and our patient's life really depends on me being there.”

As if on cue, Cosima's phone rang, vibrating its way in a little circle on the metal table next to her laptop. 

“That's probably my contact at the hospital,” Cosima said. “She was supposed to pick me up here.”

No one moved to hand her the phone, but they waited until it stopped ringing to speak again. “And who is this contact?” the General asked.

That part was not exactly confidential. “Dr. Ada Bronstein. I can give you her contact information.”

“Please do. We also need to search your email addresses and your mobile phone.”

“Excuse me?”

“Failure to comply will jeopardize your chances of entering the country.” The General gestured to the male guard, who handed the laptop and the cell phone over to Cosima. 

“Unlock these,” he said.

Unlocking her phone, she saw that, indeed, Dr. Bronstein had called her, and sent a text message inquiring about her whereabouts. “Can I just respond to these real quick?” Cosima asked. 

General Organa frowned up at her, but did not say no, so Cosima sent a quick text. _They're asking me a lot of questions._ Then the young female guard took her cell phone and the General took her laptop. While they poked and prodded, Kylo Ren continued his search of Cosima's carry-on bag. 

“I hope you like all the pictures of my fiancée,” Cosima muttered to the guard scrolling through her cell phone.

There was no reaction from the guards to her statement. Kylo Ren, though, held up the case containing the Avigail's cure, and Cosima sat bolt upright.

“What's this?” he asked.

“That's the medicine we use to treat people.”

“What is the chemical composition?”

At this point, it must have been close to two o'clock in the morning local time. Cosima's hands and legs were trembling, and biting her tongue got harder with every question they asked. Still, miraculously, she did not give the chemical composition as “the cum I scraped off your mom's face last night, bitch” but rather gave the actual breakdown of materials in each vial. The guard's face glazed over after five words or so, but the little recorder on the desk blinked away, and someone listening certainly knew what she was talking about. 

“Where was it manufactured?” Kylo Ren asked. 

“Toronto, Canada.”

“Where exactly?”

“The basement of a comic book shop. The Rabbit Hole.” She waved at her laptop. “Look it up. There's a picture of it on our Foundation's website.”

General Organa leaned forward on her chair. “You have been asked a serious question, Ms. Niehaus. If you wish to enter the country, I strongly suggest that you take this process seriously.”

Cosima's voice trembled and she dug her fingers into her palms. “Dude, I am as a serious as a fucking heart attack. There is a woman here in Tel Aviv who needs that medicine to survive. You can call her doctor if you don't believe me. Her number is in my phone.”

“That won't be necessary.”

Cosima bit her lip and struggled not to cry. She was in the habit of not drinking much in the last hour of any plane ride, in case she couldn't use a bathroom anytime soon after landing. The habit came in handy now, but her throat was dry and the blood vessels in her head throbbed, and crying wouldn't make any of that better. She took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Can I at least know why you're holding me? Or, like, your names or anything? Badge numbers?”

In college, when she participated in far more political protests, she'd had the whole spiel of what to say to cops memorized. But that was years ago, and she hadn't been exhausted or desperate to save someone else's life. 

The young female guard came around in front of her and held Cosima's phone up so the screen was a foot away from Cosima's nose. “Who are they?” she demanded.

Cosima put her glasses back on to see the picture of Nabil and his siblings around their new kitchen table. “Friends. Their aunt is a friend of mine.”

The guard handed the phone to her superior and looked down at Cosima with a face that had switched from professional indifference to outright contempt. “Where are they?”

“Djibouti. Why, you wanna call them, too? Wake them up in the middle of the night?”

The General's body language also changed when she saw the picture. “How do you know these children?”

“I just told you, they're my friend's nieces and nephews.”

“What friend?”

“A friend in Djibouti. She was also a patient of mine, and the kids are in her custody.”

The General shoved the image closer to Cosima's face. “Those children are not Djiboutian. They are Arab.”

If she had been less tired, Cosima would have rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you got me, they're from Yemen. They're refugees. You might be aware that there's a bit of a refugee situation, like, fucking, globally right now, right?”

“Well, that's a bit closer to the truth, finally.” The General pointed to Nabil's selfie, not to his smiling face but to the wall of their apartment, where a green flag with white swords decorated the drab brown and gray. “What symbol is that, Ms. Niehaus?”

“I...” She looked again, with the feeling of being dropped into the most important geography pop quiz of her life. The flag looked Saudi Arabian, but the swords pointed up more, and there was a book between the sword tips that wasn't present on the Saudi flag. The flag wasn't Djiboutian, Egyptian, Algerian, or any other country she recognized, either. “I have no fucking clue. I'm sure you have a specialist somewhere in Tel Aviv who can answer that question for you, though.”

“Smart ass,” Kylo Ren muttered, shaking out her underwear one piece at a time.

“Ms. Niehaus,” the General said, “I suggest you give us a very good explanation for this photo, right away, or I shall have to deny your entry into our country, not only for today, but for the next ten years at the very least.”

Tears fell from Cosima's eyes before she could speak. So much for not crying. “What the fucking hell,” she whispered into her hands. “Please,” she said, looking at the General and opening crying now, “they're just kids. They're good kids. Their parents are dead. I don't know what the flag means. They probably don't know, either. For fuck's sake half of them can barely read! This has nothing to do with Israel, or, or with anything else! Just let me cure my patient and leave! Then I swear to God I'll stay away for the next ten years or forever if you want me to!”

General Organa might have said more, but the door opened and a trim young officer stepped in and addressed her in Hebrew.

They stepped out together, leaving Cosima with her guards, staring at her belongings scattered across the table and quietly sobbing. Delphine would have been out of here by now. She would have said just the right things, had just the right whatever-the-fuck, and they would have let her in the country with no problems. But now, hopefully, Delphine was sleeping peacefully in a hotel bed, in a country that everyone had told them not to go into, and Cosima was this close to being denied entry into what Alison called “the only civilized country in the Middle East.” 

Cosima had almost dozed off on the little metal chair when the door opened again and the General came in with Cosima's passport in her hand and a scowl on her face. “You're very lucky, Ms. Niehaus. We've been instructed to let you into the country without further delay. Get your things together, please.”

Keenly aware of the guns still pointed not exactly at her but certainly not away from her, Cosima stuffed everything back into her bags, only taking any care with her cell phone, her laptop, and the cure. She asked no questions and made no comments. Once she was finished, she turned and held out her hand for her passport, but instead, the guards led her back around to the passport control desk. 

“Dr. Bronstein will meet you through those doors,” the General said, her voice dripping with disdain. Then she cut in front of the other people waiting to get into the country, went into the passport control booth, and stamped Cosima's passport with the Israeli travel visa.


End file.
